


Slow and Splendored

by alby_mangroves, eyres



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Difference, Art, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Captain America Big Bang 2019 | cabigbang, Captain America Sam Wilson, Domestic Avengers, Drama, Ensemble Cast, Families of Choice, Fanart, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Infinity Gems, M/M, Mutual Pining, Old Age, Old Steve Rogers, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Riots, Romance, Slow Burn, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, Time Travel, domestic terrorism, less like a slow burn and more like two idiots standing around on fire, offscreen Bucky/OCs, the geopolitical consequences of Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-03 18:57:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 65,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21184370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves, https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyres/pseuds/eyres
Summary: In the chaotic years after Steve Rogers arrives back in 2023 as an old man, he helps rebuild the world, falls in love with his best friend, adopts a stray cat, and saves the entire timeline. Not necessarily in that order.—“Now you’re slow enough for me to catch you the next time you try to do something stupid.” Bucky leans close and jostles their arms together. “That’s the best part.”Steve presses a wrinkled hand to his chest. “I’ve matured, James Barnes. I would never do something stupid.”Bucky rolls his eyes and drops an arm over Steve’s stooped shoulders. “Yeah, you’re still a punk, old man.”—For theCaptain America Big Bang 2019 | cabigbangwith words by Eyres and art by Psifiend and Alby_mangroves





	1. 2016: Alternate Timeline

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note (from eyres):
> 
> This fic became my therapeutic escape post-Endgame and was my way to find a canon way forward for Steve and Bucky, two characters I love very deeply.
> 
> Three people really helped turn this fic from a vague collection of scenes to an actual fic. Lucifuge was the first person who saw all the disparate pieces and still found something worthwhile. Alby_mangroves was an amazing cheerleader and collaborator - scenes exist because of her! Finally, ObsessiveReader for being the final beta who made sure all of this was fit for public eyes and didn’t let me cut any corners with my plot and prose.
> 
> Both Alby_mangroves and [Psifiend](http://psifiend.tumblr.com/) provided stunning art that kept me inspired. Please tell them both how lovely it is!!!! I couldn’t have asked for a better experience working on this fic and for that I’m incredibly grateful to everyone involved. 
> 
> Also, thank you to BeaArthurPendgragon who came up with the name for the cat! 
> 
> This will be 60ishk and finish posting on 11/9.
> 
> **Additional Warnings:** In this fic, I attempted to work through the social and political ramifications of half the world’s population vanishing for five years and then suddenly returning. I used elements from current, real world political situations involving immigrants and refugees as a template. This includes: domestic terrorist attacks, political riots, refugee/homeless camps, marginalization of vulnerable populations, and hateful rhetoric. If you have questions about any of this, feel free to ask in the comments. 
> 
> One more note: THIS FIC SUBSCRIBES TO THE ALTERNATE DIMENSION THEORY, RATHER THAN THE “IT’S ALL THE SAME TIMELINE” THEORY.

###  _2016 (Alternate Timeline): Steve_

In 2016, it’s finally time for Steve to go home. It's been seventy years since he showed up on Peggy’s front porch, fresh from the future and broken into more pieces than he could count; and another sixty-eight years since they’d been married. 

Peggy died two months ago with Steve holding her hand, her last breath sliding out into the universe with the finality of a bell. 

It had been a long time coming. Peggy hadn’t ever wanted to know about her death, once she learned Steve was from the future. It was one of the many rules they put around their life together from the moment he stepped into 1946. Steve quietly funneled money toward Alzheimer’s research for years, never breathing a word of it to her, even as a clock ticked over their heads.

In this timeline, when Peggy died, the grief wasn’t a black maw that swallowed him whole. He wept but it didn’t choke him, didn’t suffocate him. She got the life she dreamt of and he got his as well. The agony of all he missed was replaced by the warmth of memories. A chapter closed.

The funeral was lovely - grief intermingled with sheer pride at all she had done and all they had accomplished together. After, Steve sat at the top of the Tower and watched Tony and Natasha and Sam and Bucky and his younger self stand together, strong and alive and safe and known it was time. 

He spent the next few weeks putting his own affairs in order, making the final arrangements on the very old plan. All that was left was a one-way trip back to 2023, fulfilling a very old promise.

The night before that day he came back to Peggy, Bucky and he stayed up talking for hours, sitting so close their shoulders touched and Steve could see the little flecks of gray in the blue of his best friend’s eyes. All these years later, he can still picture them. Steve had told Bucky everything: how he couldn’t breathe in this century, how he saw her in that office in 1973 and his heart shattered all over again. He needed to go back. He needed to get that time back.

Bucky nodded. “You gotta promise to come back, though,” he said at last, soft and firm, a blessing. “You can’t stay back there forever. No dying in another timeline. I will chase you down and kick your ass.”

“I swear. You’ll barely even know I was gone.” Steve tried to smile, couldn’t quite make it. “Will you be okay?”

“I think I can survive for a couple minutes without you, Rogers. I’m not the one who throws myself at purple gods.” The noise of the wind outside swelled between them. “You need this?” Bucky asked and there was something in his voice that Steve couldn’t pinpoint.

Steve looked down. “I need to try. Maybe she won’t want me. Maybe it won’t work out. I’d never force myself into her life.”

Bucky nodded, like he was affirming something, and gave Steve that half smile he knew so well. “As long as you come back.”

“I promise,” Steve said and meant it with all his heart. 

He has spent the last seventy years committed to that promise.

“I was always going to go home,” he tells the Bucky of this timeline, once all the plans are in place, sitting in the kitchen he shared with Peggy for a whole lifetime. “I've stayed longer than I should. I made promises and I intend to keep them.”

Bucky’s eyes stare down at his coffee mug. His hair is still brown and thick, cropped short around his ears, skin unwrinkled. His serum is still chugging along at full steam. “I’m not ready to say we don’t need you here,” he says. “Who’s gonna keep all of us in line, huh?” 

Steve smiles. “I think you got it under control.”

He plans to leave two weeks later, from the rooftop of the sanctum on Bleecker Street. They’re all planning to be there and he appreciates the gesture. He plans to say personal goodbyes to each one of them, leaving the last bits of wisdom he can. 

His own self is the longest goodbye. 

They finally found him in the ice in 1996, a spring that finally warmed enough to let the old plane shift enough to be visible on sonar. It was still over two hundred miles from where Steve was found in 2011, in another timeline. This Steve got to wake up with Bucky holding his hand and Peggy hovering nearby. He got to wake up slow and sweet and learn the world at his own pace. He got to rest. 

Sometimes Steve can’t help but be jealous of that. When this Steve woke up, that was the first time Steve almost went home. Young Steve was so bright and shiny, fresh and whole in a way that he hasn’t been in decades. He still gleamed with that righteous resolve that was Captain America. Steve isn’t bright and shiny: he’s been broken and remade so many times, he’s not sure how much of his old self still remains at all. “You don’t need me,” he told Peggy and Bucky. “You have him.”

“Darling,” Peggy said. “You greatly underestimate the love we have to go around.”

So, he stayed. 

Two days after he says goodbye to Bucky, Steve walks with his younger self to Prospect Park and they meander among the children and dog walkers and bicyclists. The other Steve is just over forty now chronologically but Steve will always think of him as a kid, even if he's now been Captain America longer than Steve ever was. Everyone calls young Steve ‘Cap’ and he wears the mantle confidently, the taint that hangs over Steve far from him. 

They’ll never quite be the same man. There was no Hydra in this world by the time Cap woke up. Howard Stark died only a year ago of heart failure and Bucky hasn’t been a Hydra prisoner since 1951. So many experiences that molded Steve into who he is today never came to pass. Cap is a glimpse of what he could’ve been had he woken up in peace: a warmer, more trusting Steve. 

“When you go back,” the kid says now. “I know Peggy was the love of your life, but...” he hesitates. “I think everyone has more than one, you know? We all change and grow and I think, sometimes, we grow into people who fit others and...” His hair is still gold blond and he runs his hand through it. “I know you miss him,” he says at last. “I see it in your eyes when you look at Buck. You should go to him.”

Steve cocks his head at the kid. There’s something below the words that he isn’t saying. 

Cap laughs a little and nudges him. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” he says.

A week later, Steve stands above New York and smiles at them: how beautiful they all are. “Whatever is coming,” he tells them, “face it together and you can’t lose.”

Tony steps forward, holding something behind his back. “We have a going away gift. I know you said it was destroyed... but we can’t let Steve Rogers go to a timeline without a _shield_.” He unzips a brown carrying case and Steve sees the familiar red and white stripes. 

Steve looks down at his wrinkled hands, at the heavy ring on his finger. “I’m not sure if it’s for me anymore.”

Cap takes the carrying case from Tony and presses it into Steve’s grasp. “Then you’ll know what to do with it.”

Strange steps forward, a green glow already emanating from his necklace. “Are you ready?” he asks and Steve nods. 

“Let’s get you home.”

He steps from a rooftop in New York to the side of quiet water. He can hear Sam’s voice, angry and rising over the hum of the quantum tunnel. Across the grass, he sees the back of Bucky’s head, the easy slant of his shoulders.

Steve smiles and feels the same ache in his chest that he did when he first stepped into Peggy’s arms in 1946. 

After a long, long time, he’s come home at last. 


	2. 2023

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Throughout the rest of 2023, Steve tries his best to restore order to the world and re-establish his friendship with Bucky.

### 2023: Original Timeline

The afternoon Steve returns, he and Bucky go on a walk. They meander up and down the collapsing banks along the river, slow and easy, taking their time. The birds sing now and Steve wonders if their families have been reunited as well. 

Steve can see the discomfit all along the tight lines of Bucky’s face. It must be so strange for Bucky: seeing Steve suddenly transformed from Captain America to the old, bent man he's become.

After Sam stepped away with the shield, Bucky sat down on the bench next to him and took his hands. He looked right into Steve’s eyes, holding his gaze for several breaths. Then, finally, he said, “there you are.”

Steve wept then, grief and joy mingling together in his chest until even he barely knew why he was crying. Bucky held him.

Still, he finds words stick in his throat in the face of Bucky’s disquiet and they walk in silence down the paths, letting the wind and the birds and the water fill the space between them. Neither of them expected Steve to come back like this: wrinkled and aged. The decades and seconds they spent apart hang between them like an especially ugly elephant. He wants to tell Bucky all of it, lay himself bare in the space between them so that they can be easy with each other once again. It's not his decision to make, though. 

“Do you miss her?” Bucky ventures at last, quiet in the early evening air, hands in his pockets. He’s kicking stones into the Hudson, one right after another as if trying to hit a target. He doesn’t look at Steve. 

Steve closes his eyes and he can smell Peggy’s perfume, feel her cheek against his. “Every day,” he tells Bucky, and he does. But, it’s not like before with all the regrets turning his stomach sour and his mouth to ash. This isn’t the sense of unfinished loss that had plagued him from the moment he woke up in New York: this is a missing tinged with affection and wholeness, the sense of a life being closed. “I’m glad to be here though,” he says. “This is where I'm supposed to be.”

When he opens his eyes, Bucky is finally looking back at him and his eyes are soft. “I’m glad,” he says, and there are layers behind those words. 

Rebuilding is hard. It always is. The very foundations of the compound were demolished by Thanos’s missiles: nothing but ash and twisted metal remain. The land must be reformed, trees replanted and grass resowed. 

Outside the compound’s gates, things are worse as world governments are unmade and made. The newly returned have stepped from a time capsule to a world that is barely holding it together. Neighborhoods that were abandoned suddenly need to be cleared. Electrical grids and gas mains and water pipes must be repaired. Grocery stores run empty those first weeks. Tent cities spring up. Many of the returned have no jobs, no food, and no homes. 

Steve takes his car into Washington D.C. two days after he gets back. Sam, with Bucky by his side, is trying to build some semblance of a team and Danvers and Rhodes are off in space. They don’t notice when he leaves and Steve is glad of that. 

This is something he has been planning for decades. By stepping out of the timeline and into 1946, he gave himself the most precious commodity in the chaotic aftermath of Thanos’s snap being undone: time. He had time to plan, to think about what a world would be like with a suddenly doubled population. He had time to think about what would happen to a timeline without Infinity Stones to stabilize it. He modeled scenarios and made plans. Judgements made in the midst of battle were always made more on gut feel than reason - but Steve had seventy years to get himself ready for this fight.

Around four months after the Decimation, they gave him his own parking spot at the FEMA HQ in Washington D.C.. It would've been sooner, but, since the President and VP had been Snapped, the official presidential pardon had to wait until the results of the emergency election were finalized.

He basically lived there for six months after the trip that resulted in Thor killing Thanos. In the face of something that couldn’t just be undone, Steve was desperate for a way to make himself useful. Any recovery would need to be done the long way and he threw himself into it. He was a mess in those months, barely sleeping or eating. There were so many people who needed saving. If it wasn’t for Nat…

There’s a long line of people, winding down across the sidewalk, wrapping around the block. Steve feels his heartbreak as he walks past them. Most of them have nothing but the clothes on their back. They stare at the ground or the sky, they don’t meet each other’s eyes. These are the people who didn’t have homes and families to easily fall back into upon their return. Maybe their families moved on, maybe they died in the intervening years, maybe they never had a family to begin with. 

When Steve gets to the front doors, a harried worker shakes her head. “Back of the line, sir,” she says, barely looking up. “No exceptions. We can provide a wheelchair if you can’t stand.”

That’s fine. Steve smiles and nods and then heads around the back, uses his set of keys to go in the side entrance. The command room is easy to find, phones ringing off the hook and faxes buzzing. No one looks up when he enters, their faces pale and sleepless and strained. 

Steve walks up to the FEMA Director. He was only instated six months ago. Hell of a first year. Steve’s met him a few times but the man won’t recognize him now, not with an extra seventy years lining Steve’s face. “I was sent over as the Avengers liaison to coordinate assistance efforts.”

The Director’s gaze lands on him and Steve can almost hear his inward sigh. What’s this old man doing here, he’s thinking, he’s going to be slow and stubborn and hard of hearing and he doesn’t have time to babysit. Why would the Avengers send him?

Steve smiles. This he can do. He reaches into his bag, pulls out his laptop and sets it on the table. He’s had a photographic memory, sheer stubbornness, and seventy years to figure out the best way to handle the global re-integration of the returned. 

The PDF he opens is about ten gigabytes, neatly typed and cross-indexed. It's almost three thousand pages of detailed notes and plans and vital information about how to cope with a world population suddenly doubled in size. He’s carried it across dimensions. Steve turns it around to face the Director and the gold band on his finger pulses briefly, a reminder. 

“The first thing we’re going to need to do,” he says gently, “is make sure we sweep abandoned houses for children who may have been returned. We need to establish a database to help connect family members. Then we can start talking about the electrical grid and food supplies.”

After that first day, Steve really doesn’t see much of Bucky and the absence gnaws at him whenever he looks directly at it. They're both busy but the divide seems bigger than that. 

Bucky spends most of his time with Sam, pin-balling between the new team roster and missions and trainings. Steve glimpses them sometimes, heads bent together over maps and lists, and keeps his distance. They already have enough on their plates without him looking over their shoulders.

Steve is driving out to D.C. at least twice a week, meeting with FEMA and the Red Cross, the UN, the Pentagon, Congress and the White House (sometimes all in the same day) to go over strategies and reports. His PDF has been printed out and re-distributed across every relief agency and local government across the entire globe. He’s being pulled in a hundred different directions at once.

It takes some people a moment to believe he's still Steve Rogers. The sidelong stares and murmurs follow him around the Capitol. His second week there, they give him the title of Commander and that seems to make everyone feel a bit better, though some still call him Captain. 

They assign him an intern who seems torn between fetching him a wheelchair and hero worship. Steve is weary of the amount of people who seem to want to coddle him. 

“Do you need someone to drive you, sir?” they ask when they find out he's driving up from the compound all by himself. He’s tempted to take the motorcycle out of storage just to see the looks on their faces.

Their suffocating concern hits too close to being nineteen years old and unable to get a job because everyone thought he was too weak. Steve brushes them off and does his best to never show his frailty. 

When he’s not in D.C., Steve focuses on the restoration of the compound. The Avengers will still need a place to call home. A whole lifetime ago, he helped Tony with the design for the original compound. He takes more of a lead on this one: clean lines that flow along the river and solid structures to keep the people inside safe. 

He visits Pepper and Morgan whenever he can get out to their home. They still live out along the lake, though Pepper is talking about moving back into the city when Morgan is ready to start school. Morgan is shiny like a new penny, gentle and brilliant and so, so kind. He brings her pieces of candy and pulls a quarter from behind her ear. He buys her an art set: an easel and a palette and a set of brushes; and they paint together out on the front porch. She smiles up at him and Pepper watches them from the swing with a cocked brow.

“You’re better at children now,” is all she says. He nods. Seems so.

Morgan doesn’t seem to realize who he is: that he’s also the Steve who came to every awkward Christmas and Thanksgiving for the first four years of her life. He wasn't comfortable with her then. She always seemed too fragile to him: all of Tony’s fire bound up in something so small while the world fell apart around them. When she was a tiny baby, Tony pressed her into his arms once, as he fiddled with some project in the garage. She was so fragile and he had held her like something precious. 

Steve looked down at her little face and thought, _if Tony can have this_. Of course, there never were any kids for him and Peg. That just wasn’t in the cards.

Steve is older now than Tony ever got to be. Steve got that life and Tony got -

Morgan splatters paint across his face and laughs up at him. “Oops,” she says, with not an ounce of regret and Steve leans down to brush a kiss over her head. 

Steve spends his birthday with them and they watch the fireworks over Manhattan. Morgan gives him a painting of himself: gray hair in a fuzzy halo around his face and two splotches of bright blue for his eyes. After Morgan goes to bed, Pepper and he sit in front of the fireplace. She drinks wine with her bare feet tucked underneath her. 

“He saved everyone you know,” he tells Pepper, not ashamed of how his voice breaks a little over the words. “Not just our dimension. When he snapped his fingers, every Thanos, every one of his minions and his armies, they all disintegrated in every timeline. Tony saved universes, Pepper.”

In mid-July, Steve learns through the grapevine that Bucky has officially been promoted to Sam’s second-in-command and that he's planning on staying in New York. A load vanishes from Steve’s shoulders: he'd been almost expecting Bucky to go back to Wakanda without him again. He waits for Bucky to come tell him himself, imagines the big smile he’ll give Bucky in return... but the silence between them grows. 

It’s not just Bucky or the strangers in the Capitol who don't seem to know how to talk to him. It takes all of his old teammates and friends awhile to get used to him, as well. They’re caught between disbelief and pity when they see the furrows and creases on his cheeks and hands, the way his shoulders hunch and stoop. They treat him like glass or a grenade, handling him delicately and then looking at each other with wide, confused eyes. 

The last time they saw him, he called lightning down from the sky, felt the surge of power through his whole body. Now, he wears sweater vests and his back is bowed and he eats dinner at six p.m. The blue veins on his hands stand out starkly against pale, age-spotted skin. His voice is softer, hoarser, with decades.

His wardrobe has changed: gone are the T-shirts and tac outfits. Most of his old clothes are big on him now and he goes out to a secondhand store and picks out new button downs. He finds a handful of soft cardigans in thick knits with deep pockets. Some of them even have elbow patches. He gets pullover sweaters and a warm bathrobe for the mornings. He's not fighting anymore. He is settling. He is living. 

Wanda is the first one who finally ventures over to the little temporary trailer out by the river that he takes as his own while they finish construction. 

He makes her tea and brings out a package of cookies. They sit at the cramped breakfast nook, next to a dirty window that looks out over the river. 

“You seem different,” she tells him as she stirs her tea. “More… you. You are calm: the ocean after the storm has passed.” 

He smiles at her. “I am,” he tells her. Getting older means just becoming more yourself, Peggy told him once. 

Wanda comes often after that, sitting with him in the mornings. Her grief is deep and wide and Steve recognizes the bitter edge to it from his own. 

Steve learned a lot about agriculture in the seventy years he spent in the other timeline. He went out to the fields in California, Iowa, and Nebraska to talk to farmers about how they'd double their food production in a sustainable way if they needed to, hypothetically speaking. Production dropped sharply after the Decimation, fields left to rot and overgrow as fifty percent of the farmers vanished. With the population diminished like it was, there had been no reason to resow those fields so now, in 2023, there was no way the current food production would be able to feed a suddenly doubled population. 

Corn has the most calories per square acre so most of the fields abandoned after the Decimation would need to be converted to harvest corn. A corn field, under the right conditions, can mature in two to three months and they’d be racing against a dwindling global food supply where every day counted, even with rationing in place. 

Abandoned fields would need to be burned to get rid of overgrown grass and weeds, filled and re-fertilized. It would be back-breaking, tedious work. 

Steve mapped this all out in his head, and on paper, pored over it with the best food scientists he could find back in the Nineties, though they didn't know exactly why he was asking. 

“I didn't know you knew so much about farming,” Maria Hill says as Steve goes over the latest crop yield data in one of the makeshift conference rooms. Most of this is being handled by the Department of the Interior, but Steve likes to keep the Avengers apprised as well.

Steve shrugs. “I had some time to think in my old age,” he says. 

In wetter climates, rice fields need to be expanded. Protein production needs to switch to more sustainable animals and plants. Oil reserves need to be directed toward those growing the food and transporting the food to cities. 

There is so much work to be done and Steve throws himself into it. He's a bit slower now but he can keep up with it. 

He maps out supply chains and distribution centers. There's also the logistics of reintegrating students into schools, employees into jobs, patients into hospitals. No one has enough funding to account for the sudden influx.

The Returned can't even file unemployment claims since most of them have been legally declared dead. The administrative nightmare of reversing death certificates for millions of people is almost as horrific as convincing the oil companies to redirect their supplies to food transportation. Emergency aid shelters are set up, but they quickly overflow, giving way to tent cities that sprawl in abandoned lots and parking garages.

Steve has plans for government aid programs to assist in the economic recovery, modeled after the New Deal, but in most countries, it's languishing in bureaucratic tangles as Snapped officials fight to reclaim their old jobs.

Steve watches all of it unfold and tries to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach that it's only going to get worse.

As the weather slowly melts into late summer, the times that Steve sees Bucky dwindles even further: Bucky is busy with Sam and Steve is busy with the Capitol. They’re leading different lives, despite the close proximity.

By August, the only time that Steve and Bucky are in the same room on a regular basis is at the weekly status update meetings with the construction and clean up crews. That entire hour is spent jammed around a second hand conference table with a dozen other architects and construction personnel.

Bucky sits in the back and takes notes in his little black moleskine, ostensibly to report back to Sam, who is much too busy to come to these meetings. He always slips in exactly on time as the wall clock strikes nine am, so Steve can barely catch his eye for a nod hello. Sometimes, though, he hangs back a little as the crew filters out. He makes his way to the front of the room and stands awkwardly to check in with Steve on this project or that. The conversation is never long and always strictly business, sterile in a way Steve doesn't recognize.

It breaks Steve’s heart a little.

It's not that Bucky avoids Steve. But, it's like before with Wakanda and Romania, their lives don't quite intersect correctly. There's a feeling between them, like a speck of dust under an eyelid, and they just can't be comfortable with each other. Bucky avoids looking at him directly when they talk: his eyes catch on Steve’s wrinkled hands and drag away. He's cagey and evasive, like Steve isn't his oldest friend, but a stranger that rubs him the wrong way. Steve is flayed open in those moments, vulnerable. 

He understood it would take time, but it doesn't stop the loneliness filling up his lungs. Whenever they talk, though, he works hard at swallowing it down, keeping his face impassive. Steve may miss Bucky desperately but he’ll never impose himself.

Steve’s never been good at being delicate, at reaching out to someone when he’s not wanted. He can either bulldoze his way in, or draw deep within himself and hope that the other person eventually reaches out to him. He’d carried that damn burner phone with the number he’d given Tony all around the world, yet never managed to call himself. If Peggy had turned him away in 1946, he would've gone right back to 2023 without complaint.

So, Steve shows up to the meetings early, makes sure Bucky’s favorite donuts and bagels are always available, and hopes that time will be enough.

“You good?” Bucky asks one day after a meeting, as the temperatures begin to cool off in mid September. The construction crew is mostly gone by now and he props one hip against the conference table while Steve closes up his laptop. “They have you in one of the trailers out by the river, right? It's warm enough at night?”

The concern is blessedly familiar and Steve wants to bask in the warmth. He takes off his reading glasses, tucks then into his front shirt pocket. “Yeah, Buck. It's fine.” They prioritized finishing the dorms and barracks for the active duty personnel so Steve’s been in the drafty trailer even after most of the others have moved into more permanent housing. It isn’t bad, though - nothing like their apartment back in Brooklyn. 

Bucky nods and looks down at his phone, fidgets with the hem of his brown leather jacket. He looks good, hair pulled back from his face and a blue T-shirt pulled a little tight over his chest. He lost some muscle mass in Wakanda and he's putting it back on now. 

Steve’s eyes catch the flash of a text alert on the screen of Bucky’s phone as he turns it over and over in his hand. “Sam need you?” he asks, trying to give Bucky an out. He leans back in his chair, tugging at the sleeves of his sweater, as his back crackles uncomfortably. The fast changing weather makes his old bones weird now. He cringes a bit and hopes Bucky didn’t hear.

“Yeah. Uh.” Bucky runs his hand over his head, messing up his ponytail and making several dark strands fall out around his ears. He looks like he wants to say something. 

Steve swallows. He recognizes that expression. “I’m good, Bucky,” he says, hearing the age rasp in his own voice. “I can take care of myself. You don't need to worry about me.”

Bucky winces and then manages to look Steve square in the eye just for a second. “Well. I can't really turn that off.” He tucks his phone into the pocket of his jacket and gives him a nod. “See you around, Steve.”

“Yeah, Buck. See you later.” Steve can’t help but stare after him, hoping this means more. It probably doesn't. Bucky is just a nice guy. Still, he hums to himself as he walks back out to his trailer. 

Two weeks later, Steve is setting up for the meeting, plugging in his laptop and laying out the donuts and bagels when Bucky clears his throat. 

Steve turns and Bucky is leaning against the door jam, two large, steaming cups of coffee in his hands. The meeting isn't supposed to start for another fifteen minutes. 

“Cream and sugar, just like you like it,” Bucky says, gesturing with one cup. He walks over and sits next to Steve near the head of the table, placing the coffee next to his laptop. “I saw the plans for new housing,” he says, tone light and easy. “They look good. Sam liked them too.”

Steve nods. So this is a professional visit. “We should be done with all the single family houses by mid-November,” he says, “and then all the crews will switch over to the hangar until it’s finished, maybe by early December.”

Bucky takes a long swig of coffee and stares down at the lid, running one thumb around the edge. “You taking one of the houses?” he says. His gaze comes up and he looks at Steve directly. 

Under the scrutiny, Steve is very aware of the wrinkles on his face and how his hair is gray and white. He swallows. “I was planning to,” he says. “I know I'm not… well, I can't really go on missions any more but I was hoping to be useful in some way. Any way.” He exhales. Maybe he read this all wrong. Maybe Bucky and Sam don't want him around at all. Maybe they've just been waiting for him to leave. Maybe this is when they tell him he’s no longer welcome at the compound. 

Bucky is nodding, though, slowly. “Good,” he says. “That's good. I'm just not used to you staying in one place. That's all. I don't know what to do with a Steve Rogers that doesn't run off into battle first chance he gets.” He laughs, almost to himself.

“I'm gonna stick around,” Steve says. His throat has gone thick and dust has gotten in his eyes. He hadn’t realized that Bucky was worried about that. “I told you the end of the line once and I meant it.”

Bucky clears his throat and then coughs into his hand. “Okay,” he says. “Glad to have you then, old man.” He smiles and meets Steve’s eyes steadily, like he’s finally seeing his friend after a long absence.

Steve grins back stupidly until the rest of the crew starts coming into the room and it's time for the meeting to start. 

The cat shows up during a thunderstorm in late-September, sitting primly under the awning outside Steve’s trailer and watching the rain and lightning. Water drips off of its gray and white striped fur and, when Steve opens the door, it walks between his legs with its tail up and rubs itself along the rough side of the couch to dry off. 

"Hello," Steve says, crouching a little stiffly. His joints get a little creaky nowadays in bad weather and the thin walls and leaky windows of the trailer do not help. "Where'd you come from?"

The cat sniffs his fingers politely. White tufts of fur rim huge, bright green eyes that stare at Steve with the air of a benevolent dictator. Whatever it sees meets approval, because it then walks over to where the heat comes out of the vent, stretching out in front of the grated metal like it’s here for the long haul. The cat has no collar. Maybe, it had been Returned, Steve thinks: it had suddenly reappeared in a world where its family had moved on without it. 

He goes to his tiny kitchenette and puts some turkey scraps into a little dish and some water in a small bowl. 

The next morning, when he wakes up, the cat is curled against his side, pressed firmly to his ribs. It's purring, slow and steady. Steve starts to get up and the cat cracks one eye up at him before stretching onto its side in such a way that Steve can finally tell it's a boy. He has a long white belly with soft almost charcoal splotches that decorate his chest and two front paws. His back is streaked with darker and lighter grays, like someone had dragged dirty fingers across white paper. 

“You’re beautiful,” he tells the cat, holding out one hand for him to sniff after he sets down a plate of more turkey scraps for breakfast. “And so polite.”

"Anyone missing a cat?" he asks when he's out at the construction site that day. The cat was stretched out on the stained trailer couch when he left, soaking in the square of sunlight that fell there in the morning. He cracked one bright green eye as Steve had walked out the door, but slept on like this was the most normal thing in the world.

Bucky gives him a wary look. "Why?"

"Because a cat showed up outside my trailer last night."

"I don't think anyone around here has a cat," Maria says, barely looking up from her tablet. "Probably a stray. I read an article about how strays have tripled since the Return.“

When Steve comes home that night, the cat is waiting for him on one of the threadbare chairs near the front of the trailer. He hops down when Steve closes the door, rubbing himself along his calves and purring.

It feels good to come home to someone.

Steve crouches and rubs a hand along the soft fur, smiling when the cat nuzzles into his palm. “You can stay as long as you need to,” he tells the cat. “I don't know much about cats but I can learn.”

The cat sits down and stares back at him, before delicately reaching out to place one small gray paw on Steve’s wrist.

Steve laughs. He recognizes that expression regardless of species. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll get you some dinner.”

After he gets home from D.C. the next day, Steve picks up the cat and puts him in the car. The cat is surprisingly content with this, curling up in the passenger seat with a little long suffering sigh. 

“You’re definitely not feral,” Steve tells the cat and reaches over to scratch his head. The answering purr rumbles through his fingers. 

The vet can't find a chip but pronounces the cat healthy, if young and underfed. "I can give you the number of some shelters if you'd like," he offers. "But, they're all really full right now with, well..." He gestures his hands to encompass the world. 

Steve looks down at the cat and the cat looks back at him before yawning hugely. Steve grins. "I think we'll be okay."

Gradually, as the compound starts to take shape around them, Bucky lingers near Steve more and more. He shows up early, two cups of coffee in hand, to the weekly meeting enough times that it becomes tradition. After the meeting concludes, he stays after and walks Steve over to the job site. Bucky texts him on the weekends while Steve’s in D.C. and runs over to say hello if he sees him across the yard. Steve does his best to not cling to each scrap of affection too hard.

Steve names the cat Buster. “After Buster Keaton,” he tells Bucky one day when they’re walking toward the parking lot after the meeting. “Remember how we skipped school to go see College?” 

“That movie is almost a hundred years old,” Bucky says. 

Steve makes a face. “Still younger than us.” He tucks his hands into his pocket. “You could come by sometime,” he says. “Meet the cat. I think you’d like him. He’s much more charming than I am.”

“That wouldn’t be hard, buddy,” Bucky says with a snort. 

“He’s a bit strange too, don’t worry.” Steve grins. “How many cats just show up in a thunderstorm?”

Bucky hmms and then pauses as they reach the parking lot. Steve’s off to the Capitol for the day and Bucky is heading over to meet with Sam. “They're finally voting on your economic aid package today, right?” Bucky asks, kicking at clod of dirt. “I saw it on the news.”

“Yeah. At two o’clock. They want me there to do some last handshaking.” Steve looks down. The predictions don’t look good for the package - but he's never given up without a fight.

“If anyone can get it passed, you can,” Bucky says and, when Steve looks up, the fondness in his eyes makes Steve feel very young.

“I hope so,” Steve says, and means it with all his heart.

Bucky nods. “I'm glad you got a cat,” he says after another moment. “I remember you always wanted one. All of this,” he jerks his chin toward the compound and the parking lot. “You're doing good work, Steve.”

Steve ducks his head and fumbles to get his car keys out of his pocket. “Well. I think it’s more like the cat got me.” He clears his throat. “I’m glad you’ve stayed too,” he says, feeling brave. “Helping Sam. That’s… you look good too, Buck. I’m happy for you. I heard your last mission was a success.”

“Yeah. Well.” Bucky’s forehead furrows and he tilts his head back to examine the gray sky. “It looks like it might rain so you better head out. See you next week, Rogers.”

“Yeah. Next week.” Steve does his best to not watch him go.

Late that night after he returns from D.C., he sits in the rickety dining alcove and eats his microwaveable dinner. The aid package failed by almost 90 votes. Too many people were worried about increased taxes and unfair advantages given to those who had Returned.

Rain is streaking down the thin window panes and he flexes his knuckles when the joints stick in the damp air. His head feels heavy, thick with exhaustion. There will be other battles to fight, but Steve knows this one has been lost.

Steve misses Bucky desperately. He’s always known what to say at times like this. Bucky has always been better at adapting, looking on the bright side, than Steve. He misses Peggy, her sharp pragmatism in the face of defeat. She never let him wallow. Chill air seeps into the cracks of the trailer and he presses his lips together, feeling more alone than he did when he woke up in 2012.

Buster jumps up on the narrow bench and proceeds to sprawl himself over Steve’s lap with a sigh. Then, he blinks up at him with those bright green eyes, gentle and understanding.

Softness swells in Steve’s lungs and he smiles. “Hey, pal,” he murmurs. “I guess I'm not alone, huh?”

The cat yawns and settles his head against Steve’s stomach, purring loud enough to be heard over the rain.

“We’ll be alright,” Steve tells him, thumbing the soft gray splotch of fur right under his ear, and tries to believe it’s true.

In late October, Steve is standing on the edge of a deep pit as a bulldozer backs its way across a mound of the damp earth. It's drizzling: cold, slow drips of rain soaking around him. Steve’s in a hard hat and a rain slicker and the water is starting to soak through his pants. Mud is covering his boots and the top of his navy blue sweater vest is already damp where it peeks out under his collar. 

All around him, the beginnings of a layout are emerging out of the destroyed battlefield. The hangar is bare bones, but the long dormitory building is fully functional. The small family houses with their front porches and chimneys are clustered closer to the river. There are still trailers subbing for office space and squat yellow tents that function as storage areas. The parking lot and garages are nothing but dirt - but it’s getting there. 

There are two smaller plots of land, closer to the houses, already taped off and reserved: a memorial for Nat and a memorial for Tony. Steve took special care with these, putting them near the river in a place where the sunlight will touch them every morning, where the sweet winds from the river will brush over them in the evening. He plans for flowers, bushes and two spreading oaks. He imagines a place next to them: a smaller stone with another oak, where there is a clear view toward the tops of the Brooklyn Bridge.

It won’t be there anytime soon, of course, but someday. The thought makes him content. 

“Is it good for you to be out in this?” Bucky asks, coming up beside Steve unexpectedly. His shoulders are a bit slumped, long hair pulled back in a bun and a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead as the rain dribbles down. There’s a fading bruise on his cheek from his and Sam’s last mission. He looks exhausted.

Steve smiles and leans close, uses his elbow to nudge at him. “I’m not that fragile, Buck,” he retorts. 

Bucky huffs, a short spurt of a laugh. His hands are tucked in his pockets but he turns himself toward Steve, opening himself up. Despite the cold, his expression is warm. “You need to take care of yourself, old man,” he says, putting emphasis on the old. “We need to keep you around.”

The knot in his gut finally fully unravels and Steve laughs. “You should come for dinner,” he says. “You can finally meet Buster. They've moved me into one of the new houses.”

Bucky knows this. Just last week, Steve was assigned to one of the first finished homes on the compound. The house was barely completed a day when a whole crew showed up to carry over his few belongings. He's not stupid enough to think that Bucky had nothing to do with the preferential treatment. It’s one of the smaller houses, painted blue with white shutters and a brick chimney, within a stone’s throw of the river. Considering it’s only him and Buster puttering around, the house has plenty of room. He has a master bedroom, a small office, a galley kitchen, and a cozy living room. The best part is the wide porch with the sturdy bench swing that looks out toward the river, the memorials, and Manhattan 

Steve loves it. It seems like a home.

“It won’t even be take-out on a couch. I have a dining table and an oven and everything,” he adds when Bucky has let the silence drag on for a bit.

Bucky looks at him from under his eyelashes, a half smile making his bruised cheek crinkle. “Yeah? You any better at cooking?” 

Steve smiles and claps Bucky’s shoulder. An almost painful, giddy sensation blooms in his stomach, like it's the first day of school all over again and Bucky is holding out his hand to pull Steve off the ground. “Guess you'll have to wait and see.”

Bucky shows up for their dinner two nights later, carrying a large box and a plastic bag draped off one arm. The bag is jingling faintly. “A housewarming gift,” he says, when Steve opens the door to his knock. He sets it down right inside the entryway and surveys Steve’s new living room.

The side of the box says “Cat Condo” and looks like a giant castle or a tiered wedding cake. 

Steve puts his hands on his hips. He's trying very hard not to beam at Bucky. “What is that?”

Bucky’s brow crinkles and he stares down at the box and then drags his eyes back up to Steve. “I went to a pet store,” he says, sounding a little unsure now that he’s here. “The lady recommended this one. She said cats love it.” He looks around. “Where is he?”

As if summoned, Buster walks regally from behind the bland IKEA couch that had come with the house, tail twitching faintly. 

Bucky drops to a crouch and holds out his flesh hand. “Hi,” he says. “I brought you something, since I know Steve is a cheapskate, and I want you to like me.”

Buster sniffs at his fingers, whiskers twitching, then sits back on his haunches. He observes Bucky with his bright green eyes and then meows loudly, twisting his neck to look up at Steve. 

“This is Bucky,” Steve tells him and does not add _be nice._

Buster blinks once before turning back to Bucky. He meows once more and then flicks his tail before rubbing his whole back down Bucky’s exposed metal arm like he’s looking for a good back scratch.

“I think he likes you,” Steve says. He can't resist anymore and his cheeks are hurting a little from smiling. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his cardigan.

Bucky lifts his head and he’s smiling too, that full, wide thing he did when they were kids. It lights up his whole face and his eyes twinkle and Steve’s lungs go a bit breathless in the face of it, blown away by the sheer resilience and strength of his best friend.

“Yeah, I know you, pal,” Bucky says, like the expression on Steve’s face is awe at the cat tree and not Bucky himself. “You don’t think of things like toys or cat trees. You know this century has huge super stores, just for cats? This little guy needs to be properly spoiled and his Uncle Bucky is on the job.”

Steve laughs, giddiness bubbling up in his soul. How did he get so lucky?

After all this time, all these years, here they are, together in a small, warm house in New York. It’s too surreal to believe. Steve gets to spend this time with Bucky in the future, to see the man he is now after all of it. Bucky’s presence is like the sun and Steve can’t help but turn toward it, bask in the glow of him. 

“I have dinner in the oven,” he says, still with that stupid grin still on his face. “Roast chicken and vegetables.” 

Bucky strokes a hand over Buster’s head, cheeks going a little pink when Buster rumbles a loud purr and leans into it. “Alright,” he says. “But after, I’m gonna set up this cat tree for the little sweetheart.”

There are some things that Bucky studiously does not ask, even as their dinners start to increase in frequency: how old Steve is, how much time he has left, what happened to the serum. Bruce is the one with the hard questions. 

“The serum started deteriorating in the late nineties,” Steve tells him, sitting in the makeshift lab space they’ve set up in mobile trailers that double as offices. “People were mistaking me for Peggy’s grandson and then, within a couple years, I looked about seventy-five. It’s kept declining since. No one’s sure why. Bucky - the Bucky in the other timeline - his serum is fine. It’s just me. The docs at SHIELD ran tests and couldn’t find a solution. They don’t know how much time I have left… maybe I’ll live to be 150 or 160, but I’m not immortal anymore, if I ever truly was.” 

Bruce watches him with those huge eyes. “Do you want me to look into it?”

Less than a year ago, Steve had sat next to Peggy’s bed, holding her hand while she faded from the world. He pictures Sam and Bucky, confidently leading the team and carrying forward the legacy. “I’ve done a lot of living,” is all he answers. 

Bucky comes over now at least once a week in the evenings and Steve makes tea for both of them, with cream for himself and sugar for Bucky. Steve tires earlier these days so Bucky comes by just after sunset and leaves just before Steve goes to bed. They sit in front of the fireplace, Buster sprawled over Steve’s lap, and reminisce about the good ol’ days like the old men they are - even if only Steve looks it. Steve turns on the record player and, with his eyes closed and Bucky talking about his day, it’s almost like their lives are right back to 1938. 

Buster seems to like Bucky, kneading his leg when he sits on the other arm chair before strolling back to sleep curled up on Steve's lap. Bucky calls Buster ‘sweetheart’ and spoils him rotten. He brings treats and toys on almost every visit and scratching his ears for hours when Buster demands it. 

“I saved you, you know,” Steve can’t help but tell him, early on when they’re still relearning the feel of each other. “Peggy and I. We rescued you from Hydra in 1951. We saved Natasha too. She came to the US in 1992.”

There’s so much between them: known and unknown. They’ve lived so many different lives and it’s fitting that they’re together in the final years. 

It’s so easy, Steve finds, to slip back into that easy familiarity with Bucky, even with all the changes they’ve been through. This is the Bucky who dragged him from the Potomac and the Bucky he found in Romania and followed to Siberia. This is the Bucky who spent two years in Wakanda, tending goats and cows and small children with equal measures of grace and care. This is the Bucky that battled Thanos by his side. 

Steve may be an old man now - but he still knows how he fits with Bucky. He can find all those well worn grooves just the same way. 

“You push yourself too hard,” Bucky gripes at him when Steve is too exhausted to even drink his tea after a long day spent in D.C. arguing with senators. He frets over him, plumps pillows behind his back, turns up the thermostat, and grabs the throw blanket draped over the foot of the bed. “You can't run yourself into the ground, old man.”

Steve smiles at him, feels warm in all of his soft places. “I won't,” he says. “There is just so much to be done. I've had a long break and this is temporary.”

Bucky grimaces. He looks exhausted too, pulled thin by a world that needs heroes more than ever. 

“Make sure you make time for a life, Buck,” Steve tells him. “I know all this” - he waves his hand to take in the compound and Sam and the whole world - “needs you but… don’t burn out. I didn’t do that for a long time and it was tearing me to shreds. I had my rest. Make sure you get yours.”


	3. 2024

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2024, Steve is forced to re-evaluate his plans.

### 2024

By January, the food shortage is mostly under control and infrastructure is well on its way to being rebuilt. 

Jobs, however, are a lingering issue. In the first session of the year, the senate had rejected an abbreviated version of an economic aid package for the Returned, even after the House approved it.

A global recession had hit after the Decimation and jobs were in scarce supply before the population doubled. Many employers outright refused to take back any of the Returned and even more people were aggressively antagonistic to the idea of their tax dollars going to helping those who had vanished for five years. It was a mess. Many of the Returned were still stuck in limbo after being declared legally dead, unable to apply for what aid there was. Voter registration was an entirely different beast all on its own - most attempts to automatically re-register those Returned had been rejected by state legislatures. They couldn't apply for jobs, they couldn't vote, they couldn't get health insurance.

In the months since Thanos’s defeat, massive homeless camps grew across cities and towns in the sectors that were abandoned after the Decimation. Many of the Returned were almost like refugees, their homes and families and lives stripped away by something incomprehensible. 

Shortly after the new year though, land owners tried to reclaim those sectors, hoping to turn it back into profitable housing. Faced with another eviction, those living there fought back. Riots broke out in Los Angeles and Chicago and New York and Seattle. A fire set on the east side of LA burned for three weeks, destroying almost a hundred abandoned buildings. 

Then, in early February, rioters clash with the police in San Francisco. Two hundred people die in the ensuing panic. Then, that same day, a blaze gets out of control during the clean up, swallowing a whole neighborhood on the east side of the bay within a matter of hours. 

Sam and Bucky fly out to help Hope and Scott, but there's not much they can do except assist with the clean up. It's a mess. Almost six hundred people dead, another thousand injured, countless homes and businesses destroyed.

Bucky comes back, stinking of smoke and dirt, and something broken in his eyes.

For the nation, that is the final straw. 

The President, who is running for a second term after being elected by an emergency nationwide referendum post the Decimation, signs legislation that any Returned person who is caught destroying property will face up to a year in prison. Martial law is enacted and a curfew is set in all major cities. Gatherings of Returned in public spaces are curtailed. 

Steve fights against it, shouts himself hoarse and considers how long it would take the Secret Service to bring him down if he punched the man in the nose. He is ignored and the announcement comes on a rainy Tuesday in March, directly from the Pentagon and the Oval Office. Steve is asked _politely_ to leave the White House. 

Traffic between the White House and the Capitol is a mess, protestors spilling from the lawn and into the streets, but Steve presses onward. The police are trying to separate the two sides but bursts of shouting and shoving keep erupting every few feet as Steve inches down the road. When he finally arrives at the Capitol, tanks and armed men are already gathering en masse and Steve’s gut sours further.

“People are scared and desperate,” Steve tells Bucky over his cellphone four hours later. No one in the legislature is taking his calls and security has escorted him from two offices. It’s over. He’s too exhausted to remain upright or hide his hoarse voice from Bucky. 

Steve had seen, from one of the upper windows, when the military moved in with tanks and tear gas to disperse the protestors on the lawn. He can still smell the smoke. “They don't need more guys with guns breathing down their necks and I can't… I can't stop…” He has to inhale sharply around the anger and grief pulsing in his throat. 

Maybe, if he was younger, people would stop and listen. Instead, men and women in suits walk past, barely glancing at the old, ineffectual man he has become. 

Bucky is silent on the line. “Come home, Steve,” he says, the pleading so thick that can Steve can taste it even miles away. “Come home. It's not safe there. We… I need you here.”

Steve leaves D.C. that day and does not go back.

"So how did it feel to wield Mjolnir?" Scott asks while Steve is passing the potatoes.

Bucky hides a grin behind his napkin while Hope flushes and hisses, "Scott!"

Steve smiles. Scott treats him pretty much the exact same way that he did before: all the giddy appreciation of someone who has never seen Steve fail. Except, Scott has seen him fail, a dozen times over. 

When Hope and Scott showed up at Avengers HQ for a debrief on the San Francisco fires last week, Steve jumped at the opportunity to invite them over to dinner. He made sailor’s stew, an old favorite of Peggy’s.

"No, it's okay." Steve sits back in his chair and looks under the table at where Buster is blinking at him sleepily. "I didn't have much time to think about it. It was just the right thing to do, so I did it."

Scott shakes his head. "Wow. Captain America."

"Not anymore," Steve reminds him. 

He hadn’t quite told the truth. For the rest of his life, Steve won't forget how Mjolnir felt in his hand. The hammer sang to him when he lifted it, welcoming him like an old friend. It was excited to see him, sparking and instructing him on what to do. When the lightning came down, he felt it through every fiber of his bones, a surge of power so great that he felt humbled by the force of it. There was something joyous to it, elation zinging through his veins as if the lightning was glad to be used. 

That night, Bucky helps him with the dishes, putting them away while Steve wipes them dry. "That's when I knew it was going to be okay," he tells Steve as he stacks plates together. "We stepped through that portal and saw all those creatures and Thanos and... I didn't know how we were going to win, even with all of us. But, when I saw you, with that hammer. You were glowing, Steve. I knew we'd win. How could we not?"

Steve stares down at the age spots on his hands so he doesn't have to see Bucky's face. He feels like he did with Mjolnir, humbled in the face of Bucky's presence by his side.

After the dishes, Bucky works on his mission reports and Steve puts on his reading glasses and picks up his book while the TV plays softly in the background. Buster is curled against Steve’s stomach purring as Steve’s hand rubs along his spine.

“These people, the Returned,” one balding man says on the TV with air quotes around the phrase. “They didn't pay taxes for five years. They didn't rebuild the world. And now they come and expect hand outs? They expect to just be handed their jobs and their houses back like nothing happened? It's crazy. My taxes are going to taking care of them while they sit around and cry that we’re not just handing them everything on a silver platter.”

Over the top of his reading glasses, Steve sees Bucky stop writing, gaze going up to the TV. Buster opens one eye and sits up a little as if he senses Bucky’s discomfort. 

“They didn't ask to be taken or to be brought back,” a blond woman argues. “We can't blame this on them… but I agree that they need to be pulling their own weight. They’re free-loading off of us.”

Steve grabs the remote and flips the TV off. “They don't know what they're talking about, Buck.”

Bucky rubs the sides of his mouth and then puts a hand through his hair. “It never gets any better,” he says. “Always another war.”

Steve presses his fingers together, so he can feel the hum of his ring. Buster butts his head against the side of his hand and, when Steve looks down, his gaze is fixed on Steve’s fingers. 

Between day they defeated Thanos and when he took the stones back, Sam and Steve only got a couple hours to talk before he went back to Peggy. Then, Steve came back and immediately handed Sam the shield and an entire team and a world gone crazy.

Sam is understandably very busy. Sam doesn’t have time to sit on the couch of an old man and drink tea and talk about his day. Sam is important and needed and Steve is ludicrously proud of him. 

More than anything, he wants to give Sam space. He wants to let Sam be Captain America the way he wants to be Captain America. Sam shouldn't live in Steve's shadow. He needs to stand on his own two feet and lead without the specter of Steve watching over his shoulder. So, Steve purposefully keeps his distance. He ignores the meeting invites for Sam’s direct reports and keeps their texts brief and professional. 

But, Steve _misses_ Sam. He misses how they watched movies together in dirty hotel rooms when they were on the run from Ross. He misses how Sam sang quietly to himself when they flew the quinjet late at night. He misses the way Sam would laugh at Steve’s jokes when everyone else just rolled their eyes. Hell, he misses how Sam would elbow him in the ribs when Steve was being ridiculous. He worries if Sam is getting enough sleep or enough to eat, if he’s taking time for himself and visiting his ma and his sisters. 

Bucky often talks about Sam: Sam did this and Sam did that and Sam said something funny... and Steve soaks it all up. 

"You should hang out with him," Bucky says. "Get him to take a load off. He's getting too in his own head."

"He'll be fine," Steve replies, knowing it’s true even as he wants to talk with Sam desperately. "He doesn't need me."

Then, one day in the heat of summer, Sam corners him by the garages as Steve comes back from volunteering in the city. 

"We should get lunch," Sam says, even though it's almost 3 pm in the afternoon. He’s in civilian clothes, a black leather jacket over his white T-shirt. He's wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat and there's a familiar slump in his shoulders that Steve thinks he recognizes in his own muscle memory.

Steve pulls his car keys back out of his pocket, waves them in the air. "My treat."

They go to a diner, far enough from the compound and the city that no one will bother them, and sit in red vinyl booths. Sam orders eggs and bacon and a hamburger and Steve gets soup and a BLT. 

"You've been avoiding me," Sam says when the waitress has left. He wraps both hands around his coffee mug. In the bright diner lights, the tell tale signs of exhaustion are evident.

Steve swallows. "Sam..."

"No. I want to say this." Sam holds up his hand. "You're not as clever as you think you are. I don't care how many years you have on me now. You're probably doing this because you don't want me to feel pressured to take your advice or to feel overshadowed or whatever. And I appreciate that. But, you've also always been my friend. I appreciate that the OG Captain America isn't micro-managing the new one - but I would like to talk to my friend Steve. I miss that dude a lot.“

Steve smiles, feels all the wrinkles in his face crinkle up toward his eyes. "Okay," he says. Then, quieter: "I've missed you too.”

“Look at you, talking about your feelings. I like this old Steve.” Sam takes a long swig of his coffee. "Now I'm gonna bitch for awhile and you're just going to listen, alright?"

"Yessir."

Sam grins. "Secretary Ross is an asshole. I mean, I always knew he was an asshole. But, he has this snotty way of telling stories in meetings like his fucking personal autobiography is supposed to be relevant to domestic terrorism..."

Steve leans back and nods in the appropriate places, makes little humming noises and lets Sam vent.

After that, Sam again invites Steve to his weekly meetings with Maria Hill and Steve finally accepts. Most of the meetings center around the growing division between those who were left behind by Thanos’s snap and those who vanished into dust.

“The election cycle isn't helping,” Maria says. “You have politicians campaigning on special protections and tax breaks for the people who weren't Returned and then others campaigning on the opposite. It doesn’t help that a lot of the Returned aren’t registered voters anymore states are still making it really difficult to correct that.”

“Have you seen that guy? On YouTube?” Sam snaps his fingers. “Jeremy Deville? He's suing his parents because he inherited their fortune and their company when they were taken in the Decimation and they’re trying to force him to give it back.”

Maria nods. “He’s been at a lot of the bigger protests and has something like five million followers on Twitter. We haven't linked him directly to any violence - but if they have a leader, it's probably him.”

Maria brings up a video on her laptop of a young man with cold eyes and a strong jaw. He has thick dark hair, handsome but with something cruel in the edge of his mouth. 

“We are the strong ones,” Deville says. He's sitting in what looks to be his office. Pretentious-looking books line the wall behind him. “We were left behind for a reason and it's because we are better than them. We were chosen to remake the world. Now, they're back and they want everything we built without them. They're taking advantage of us. We don't need them. We don't want them!”

Maria shuts her laptop hard. Her hands are shaking a little.

“There are always men like this,” Steve says quietly, taking off his reading glasses. “Every decade. Every timeline. They're bullies.”

Sam nods and writes something down in his notebook. “We’ll keep an eye on him,” he says, voice a little rough. 

Sam and Steve also start meeting for lunch regularly, squeezing even a few minutes in to eat sandwiches on the deck out by the river. Buster tags along occasionally and Sam feeds him scraps of meat from his food and scratches his ears.

Sam does most of the talking and Steve is happy to just listen, happy to validate Sam’s decisions when asked. 

“So what does Steve Rogers want to do now?” Sam asks one day, half eaten hot dog in one hand as they sit together near the temporary trailers that Sam has been using as a command post. 

Steve grins. “He wants to do what you do,” he says. “Only slower.”

Now that he’s not driving out to D.C., he spends time making the little house by the river into a home. He visits antique stores and handmade furniture shops around the compound. The house came with the utilitarian furniture someone mass ordered for all the rooms on the compound - it’s comfortable enough, but not homey. Steve takes his time with the process. He wants this to be perfect. 

Eventually, he acquires two soft, plush chairs, with matching footstools, and a couch, all in dark shades of red. The couch is long and a little bit firm, perfect in case Bucky wants to sleep over a night. Buster immediately makes himself at home on the back of Steve’s new chair, appreciating the wider, soft surface. A few weeks later, Steve finds a thick, gray carpet and lays it over the smooth wood floor so it muffles footsteps. He gets a lamp with a delicate white porcelain base and a side table with curved legs. During a rainy weekend, he wallpapers the whole living room with a soft, wispy pale gray pattern that softens the harsh white of the walls. 

There’s a window seat near the fireplace, next to Buster’s cat tree, and he buys thick cushions and a cashmere knit burgundy throw blanket to drape there in the sunlight. He puts an easel in the corner, a little place for him to paint when he has extra time. Bookshelves line the back wall and he fills them with all the books he’s read over the years, and more that he intends to read. On another wall, he hangs pictures of the Howlies and Peggy and Bucky and Sam, all of his teams. 

When he’s done, he surveys his living room from the doorway to the kitchen, with Buster pressed against his calf. He never really had a home in this timeline. There were the clean, modern rooms of the tower, his empty apartment in D.C., and the utilitarian sleeping quarters of the compound. After the Accords, he lived out of the quinjet and safe houses. 

The closest thing he ever had to a home in this timeline was Bucky’s little house on the edge of the lake in Wakanda. Just one room and one bed. Steve slept on the floor whenever he stayed over. It was peaceful, warm. It was safe.

He was running himself ragged, even then. Choosing Bucky over his country and his shield was always the right call - but it didn’t make the sense of loss any easier to bear. He lost most of his team and the only place he’d become familiar with since the ice. Bucky went into cryo and Steve was adrift, throwing himself into his duty because it was the only thing left. Then, Bucky woke up, free of trigger words. He made a little house by a lake and Steve found a place to rest, truly rest, for the first time since maybe 1944.

Steve can still picture it. There was a soft low couch and thick, soft pillows and blankets. Golden lamps had filled the space with warm light. Steve remembers waking up to the sound of rain on the roof and the smell of eggs frying. He remembers Bucky curled into the couch, reading books with a giant mug of tea by his elbow. Steve hadn't been able to spend much time there - but all the times he did were filled with peace.

Then, Thanos snapped his fingers and that home was torn away yet again.

Now, six years or seventy-one years later, Steve is making his own home at long last. Bucky sleeps with the team, out in dorm-like rooms near the launch bay. He and Sam are right next to each other and Wanda is just down the hall. Bucky has a desk with a chair and a double bed, a closet for his uniforms, a small kitchen. It’s a good little room, better than anything they had in Brooklyn - but it’s not a home.

Steve wants _this_ to be Bucky’s home. 

When Bucky comes by the evening after it’s all arranged, he walks around the living room for a bit, hand trailing across the soft surfaces.

Buster is laying on top of his cat tree, head hanging over the side. His green eyes are fixed on Bucky, like he's waiting just as breathlessly as Steve for Bucky’s opinion.

“It looks cozy,” Bucky tells Steve after awhile, gaze lingering on the photographs. “Like you’re planning on staying here.”

Steve settles down in his chair and puts his feet up on the footstool. “I plan to,” he tells Bucky. 

Bucky flops down in the opposite chair and wiggles a little, like he’s trying to find the perfect spot. “You’re not planning on taking off again? Going back to…” he trails off and his gaze goes down. His fingers pluck at the seam of the chair. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, quietly. “When I came back here, I came back here for good. This is my home. This has always been my home. I want to help rebuild the team and this world… I want to be here. With you, with Sam. I always was going to come back. That was always my plan.”

Bucky nods, slow. “I’m holding you to that,” he says. “You don’t get to skip out on a life here.” He leans back in the chair, props his feet up. “I like it,” he pronounces. “It’s a good home.”

Steve’s worn cheeks wrinkle against the undersides of his eyes as he smiles. “Good,” he says, warmth filling up his chest. “You’re always welcome here.”

Bucky grins at him. “I’ll take you up on that.”

Steve makes the short trip to New York City whenever he can, since his presence is no longer welcome in Washington D.C.. He works in the community center he led his support group at, during the five years when half the world had been ash. Other days, he visits the tent cities that have bloomed across Central Park. He ladles soup at the halfway house set up for those with no families or homes to return to. 

“I should've stayed gone,” one woman says, curled into a ball next to the camping tent she calls home. She has a good spot, near the fountain and the sound of water running makes it so you can almost pretend you're somewhere else. Her parents and sister died in the five years she was missing. Her house was sold, her job went to someone else, her husband remarried and now has two kids. “There isn't a place for me in this world anymore.”

Steve sits next to her and draws the fountain and the trees and the way her face breaks when she thinks of all she lost. The weather is turning colder now and Steve worries what will happen to them all when it begins to snow. It reminds him of 1930: of the way his mother scraped pennies and the families that didn't have enough pennies.

Almost a hundred years of living exists between that winter and the man he is now; but the memories of the ache in his belly and the cold seeping into his threadbare coat are still a living thing. His heart hurts from it. Ninety years of progress and there are once again tent cities in Central Park.

It's hard for many of the Returned to find jobs, even with the economy slowly picking back up. Many businesses have signs in their window: “No Returned working here.” Steve sees it in the talking heads on TV, in the opinion columns of papers: why should a hard working person be kicked out of their job just because someone else had the position five years before?

The next week, when he's just pulled some candy out of the ear of a small child who lives with her father on the very edges of the park, Steve registers shouts coming from up the street. He turns and a swell of people are coming up the block, carrying signs and chanting. 

“We are the Undeparted,” a man with a megaphone bellows. “We rebuilt this world and you are the leeches. You are taking our jobs and our homes and our food. You don't belong here anymore.”

Steve runs his hand down the girl’s head, soothing the fear in her eyes. “Go to your dad,” he tells her and gets up from where he’d been crouching as she runs down the row of tents. When she vanishes, he turns back to face the crowd, drawing a full, deep breath. 

Around him, the people living in the first row of tents start moving restlessly, some gathering their belongings and moving deeper into the camp and others folding their arms and staring back. 

“This city isn’t yours,” the man shouts into the megaphone, the crowd on his side calling out agreement.

“Bullshit,” someone shouts back. 

The impending sense of a fight is thick and familiar in Steve’s old muscles. He hasn’t worn a shield in decades and he still rolls his fingers like he’s grabbing at the strap. Steve has no weapon, no reinforcements. He has to prioritize, focus on de-escalation and defense. There are too many children around, more than a dozen just in his eye-line.

Steve leans close to a woman hovering with her own son. “You should head over to the fountain,” he instructs quietly. “Gather up the kids.”

Her face is pale but she nods. Everyone remembers San Francisco and Dallas, where fifty people died and over five hundred were injured when a whole encampment was razed by a crowd just a month ago. 

That won’t happen here, not if Steve can help it.

Steve straightens his shoulders and walks over to the guy with the megaphone. “Hey - there are kids here, son. This isn't the place.” He's at least wearing his sturdier boots today, but with his thick sweater over his plaid shirt and khaki pants, he looks way more like a grandpa than someone who’d once been called Captain America. 

The guy snorts. “This is exactly the place.” He's in his early twenties, dark shaggy hair almost down past his ears, part of the generation that became adults in an unrecognizable world and never stopped being angry about it. The Returned are a convenient target for the unresolved trauma and loss and fear that Thanos brought upon the universe. His face is twisted with rage but Steve thinks he catches a glimpse of a boy still there - someone who can be reached. 

“They haven't done anything to you,” Steve tries again. He puts a hand on the megaphone, gently pushing until it starts lowering. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the woman ushering the last of the children deeper into the park. “Just go home.”

“You gonna make me, Gramps?”

Steve doesn't break the guy’s gaze. “If I have to.” The ring on his finger pulses hard once, a promise. 

The guy rolls his eyes and then shoves at Steve’s shoulder with one hand. 

Steve doesn't move. He may look the part of an old man but there's still something of the serum singing in his veins. Steve probably can't take on Thanos right now - but the garden variety bully? That wasn't even a problem in 1940. “No one has to get hurt,” he says, keeping his hands raised placatingly. 

“They don't belong here,” someone shouts from a little ways back in the crowd and a bottle goes sailing over the crowd. The glass shatters against a tree, raining glass down on the tent below it. 

The sound gives the guy with the megaphone more conviction and he pulls back his fist, telegraphing the move long before he actually swings. It's a bad punch, thrown by someone more used to leaving comments online then actually showing up to a battlefield. 

Steve catches it easily, twists the man’s arm around behind his back, so the guy cries out, forced to his knees. The megaphone hits the ground and rolls. “Walk away, son,” he warns, leaning close to the guy’s ear. 

The crowd is riled at this point, though. Another bottle shatters behind Steve and then a brick crashes a few feet to the left. The people at the front of the mob shift restlessly and Steve knows they're looking behind him, at the few remaining occupants of the camp. 

Somewhere down the street, a siren starts up. 

_Bucky is going to be furious, _Steve thinks and then he drops the guy’s fist, leaving him on the ground as he backpedals toward the camp. “Fall back into the park,” he instructs. 

The next bottle slams directly to Steve’s right, close enough that he feels shards of glass hit his cheek when it explodes on contact with the cement. The sirens are louder now. Honestly, given the state of the world, Steve’s not counting on the arrival of the police curtailing the mob. 

He hears a shout behind him and turns back around barely in time to get his arms up to block another punch from the guy with the megaphone. His face is red and twisted with fury. 

The crowd behind him is moving forward now, eyeing the camp as people move back into the deeper parts of the park. 

Steve kicks the guy’s legs out, uses his own body weight to drop them both to the ground. His back protests. “Settle down,” he orders, one hand pressed on the guy’s sternum. The ring on his finger thrums, purple and yellow smoke wreathing up from it together. 

Underneath him, as the smoke drifts over his face, the guy goes completely limp, staring up at Steve in a daze. 

His nerves burn all the way up and down his arm, pounding against his very bones. The odd haze swirls around his fingers, wafting up his sleeve. There’s a memory, niggling at the edge of his mind… Across an ashy battlefield, Tony had met Steve’s eyes, pained and resigned and so powerful, hand still held aloft from the snap. 

He stumbles to his feet, shaking his hand like he can make the power stop through sheer will alone. The burning spreads up through his shoulder and chest and he clenches his teeth against it. He closes his eyes and sees rainbows. 

_Stop. _

That's when the brick hits him square in the side of his head. 

Steve is still in the ER when he hears Bucky, outside the little curtained off bed that Steve is sitting on, asking a nurse where Steve Rogers is. 

“Buck,” he calls and then ends up coughing, voice going scratchy over the irritation in his throat. The police used tear gas, when they finally arrived. 

Bucky hears anyway and he rips back back the curtain. “What the hell, Steve?” He's pale and dirt is smudged along his nose like he's just come from the field. 

“They shouldn't have called you,” Steve says as Bucky comes over. He tries to sit up higher, wincing as he tugs at the IV in his hand. 

“They damn well should've called me.” Bucky rakes his gaze over Steve in a way that makes him shrink. “They said on the phone you were unconscious when they brought you in.”

“I'm fine. Just a little knock.” Steve points to the bandage pressed to the area behind his ear. “It didn't even need stitches.” He's only wearing his white undershirt and a pair of too short hospital scrub pants. The rest of his clothes have blood on them. Steve forgot how much head wounds bled - he's not going to tell Bucky that though. 

Bucky lets out a long breath and sits down. He puts a hand on Steve’s knee. “The serum still working well enough for that?”

“Yeah, Buck. I’ll just have a few bruises and aches by tomorrow.” Steve twists his ring around. 

“They said there was a riot. Down at the Central Park camp.” 

“Just some bullies. And the police showing up with tear gas.”

“You got gassed?” Bucky’s voice goes up an octave. 

“Not nearly as bad as that time when I was out protesting in California during the Vietnam war,” Steve says, just to see Bucky’s forehead go pinched and strained. 

“Steve. You have got to be careful. You can't… you're not a kid anymore.”

“Haven't been a kid for awhile.” Steve picks at the tape on his IV, staring at how the needle makes his thin, wrinkled skin go dark like a bruise. “They were gonna hurt the children, Buck.”

The curtain gets pulled back and a young doctor with glasses sliding down his nose steps in. “Mr. Barnes? Mr. Rogers?”

“That's us.” Bucky stands up, shoves his hands in his pocket. “What's the prognosis?”

Steve pushes himself up in the bed a little. “When can I go home?”

The doctor glances between them. “The head CT is clear but, given your age, I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”

Steve squeezes his jaw together. That's not going to happen. “Thanks for the advice but I’ll do just fine in my own bed.”

Bucky peers at Steve for a long moment and then sighs, turning to the doctor. “I’ll stay with him,” he volunteers. 

One of the doctor’s eyebrows goes up and Steve bristles. He can take care of himself just fine. He's been doing it for over a century now. “Mr. Rogers,” the doctor begins. His gaze is patronizing, maybe pitying, like Steve should be in a wheelchair somewhere and staying out of the way because he's _old. _

“Let’s go, Buck.” Steve rips at the IV tape, hating how his hands are trembling a little. His ring burns, the echo of power from earlier sizzling across his veins. He could take this whole hospital to the ground. He could remake the world into something else. He could-

Bucky grabs his hand and presses the sheet down on the blood leaking from where Steve has yanked out his IV. “Jesus Christ, Steven,” Bucky snaps, sounding furious and scared. “Let’s keep your blood in your body.”

“I'm not staying here,” Steve retorts. He swings his legs over to the floor. “Where are my shoes?” 

“Steve.” Bucky says it loud and commanding and it's enough to make Steve slow down, settle a little under his hands. “You're not going to stay here, okay? I’ll take you home. But you can't…” he closes his eyes and breathes. “You can't act like you're the same as you were before because you're not. You're not.”

Steve grits his teeth. “Don't treat me like I'm fragile.”

“You haven't been fragile a day in your goddamn life,” Bucky says. He grabs both of Steve’s hands and squeezes. “But you're not a kid. You're not. And I'm not saying that to make you stop. I'm saying that because I want you around to be crotchety and ornery for another seventy years. You owe me that time, Steve. I'm not gonna let you skip out on your promise. So, sit back in this bed and let the doc check you out properly.”

Steve sits back. His hand is stinging and he looks down at how the blood slides through the grooves and folds along his fingers. “I didn't…”

“I know you didn't mean to,” Bucky says, quieter now. He smooths his thumb over the area he's still applying pressure to. “Just. God. Steve. They told me you were unconscious and that you were in the hospital because you'd been hit in the head with a brick. That's not… you can't scare me like that.”

The doctor is back beside him now, checking his hand and taking his blood pressure. 

“Okay,” Steve agrees. “But I'm not staying here overnight.”

They get home in the wee hours of the morning, the compound dark and still as Bucky parks in front of Steve’s little house and comes around the side to help him out of the car. His bloodied clothes are in a clear plastic bag that Bucky grabs from the backseat once Steve is steady on his feet. 

Steve is stiffer than he'd thought, a low throbbing ache that runs along his bones and muscles. His back stoops more than usual as he climbs the stairs to the porch. He’s still just in his white undershirt and scrub pants - Bucky had turned the heater up in the car and the cool night air makes his skin go up in goosebumps almost instantly. 

Bucky opens the door for him, flicks on the lights. “Sit down,” he instructs. “You look like you’re going to fall over.”

Steve wants to argue but every muscle is aching even after the short walk from the car. He lowers himself to the maroon wingback chair, doing his best to stifle his groan. 

Buster leaps onto his lap, meowing noisily. He sniffs at Steve’s face and his hands, grooming his fingers with a rough tongue for several seconds before curling into his lap with a put-upon sigh.

Bucky scratches the soft fur at his neck as he stands over Steve. “He’s okay, sweetheart,” he tells the cat. “But, you and I need to keep an eye on him. He can’t stop finding trouble. Now, sit on him and don’t let him move while I get his bed ready.”

Steve huffs a laugh and pets Buster with the hand that hadn’t been stuck with an IV. There's a bandage on that hand and he peels at the tape, watching how it tugs at his spotted and sagging skin. 

“You know, I was doing just fine until that brick hit me in the head,” he calls into the bedroom after Bucky. 

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Could've held all of them off.”

Buster makes a huffing noise and kneads his thigh. 

“I'm sure you could've,” Bucky says, patient, and Steve hears the eye roll in the words even though he can't see his face. 

When Bucky comes back into the room, he has Steve’s navy robe draped over one arm and his favorite blue slippers in the other hand. His face is a tiny bit damp from where he must've splashed water on it in the bathroom and he’s pulled his hair tie out so his hair is loose around his face. He’s lost the raw edge of fear he's had since the hospital, the sides of his mouth only a little pinched. Bucky sits down on the foot stool in front of Steve and the long strands of his dark hair catch the lamplight. Steve hadn't realized how long his hair had gotten. Bucky looks soft and almost ethereal. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, as Bucky lifts his feet one by one, undoing the laces on his boots and pulling them off to replace them with the slippers. Now that he's home, the exhaustion is hitting hard. It's not just the head wound or the bruises - whatever power had flowed through the ring had sapped something deep within him. 

Next, Bucky helps him sit up a little and drapes his robe over his shoulders, holding it out so Steve can put his arms through the sleeves. He comes around the front and tugs it tight around Steve’s chest. “Let’s get you to bed, huh?” He shoos Buster off of Steve’s lap and levers him out of the chair, keeping an arm around his waist as they slowly move toward the bedroom.

The covers on the bed are already pulled to the side and Steve sits down on the sheets with a heavy sigh. Buster leaps onto the mattress, sitting primly on the foot of the bed and cleaning his paws. The white fur across the top of his head gleams in the low light from the lamp. 

While Bucky puts his boots in the closet and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water, Steve stares at the photos he has set out on the table near the bedside. Peggy and Bucky and Nat and Sam and Wanda and Tony with Morgan. He goes over each picture like a meditation, then shuffles himself fully into bed, pulling the covers over his legs. Distantly, he feels Buster curl against his side, pressing under his hand with the ring. 

He's asleep before Bucky comes back. But, when he wakes up the next morning, sunlight is streaming through the window and Bucky is conked out on the chair next to the bed, head tilted back as he snores. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your lovely comments. I've been slightly nervous to post this fic as I know all the polarizing opinions around Endgame so your kind words mean the world!
> 
> The next chapter (2025) will be coming on Wednesday!


	4. 2025

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2025, Steve adjusts to the retired life.

### 2025

The weakness persists for months after the riot in Central Park. It's not the head injury, though that's what Steve blames it on when Bucky asks. Steve doesn't like thinking about what it really is, what he almost did. 

It felt so natural, so easy, in those scant moments when his blood was hot and the tension was building around him. The power swelled and whispered, wanting to be used. 

He can't, though. If anyone finds out…

Steve wants to remain here. He wants to stay at the compound where Bucky and Sam live within a stone’s throw away from him. He wants to have slow dinners, long walks, and silent conversations with Bucky. They spent ten seconds or seventy years apart and Steve doesn't want to leave again. This is his home. He’s told Bucky he would stay.

He wandered, far and wide, across time and dimensions. He had the life he had always dreamed about. Yet, in this time and this place, he knows he belongs at the compound. It has taken decades for him to find that peace, that surety, and he can't lose it now - not here at the end. 

So, he pulls into himself. Steve thinks of it like being a turtle, tugging in all of his soft parts so that he can be small and invisible. He wouldn't have been able to do this, back when he was thirty-five and broken into dozens of pieces. It had been hard to weigh the benefit of being quiet against the agony of inaction. He was small for so long that the thought of making himself smaller felt like a betrayal. 

Now, he has spent almost a hundred years being larger than life and he has learned the sweet pleasure of living a simple, quiet life. Bucky was taught that through fire and blood and pain. As soon as he took his first breaths as a man free of Hydra, he sought out the small, quiet spaces. 

Steve hadn't understood. 

Bucky longed for a tiny apartment and a peaceful farm and Steve respected him for it, yearned for Bucky to have everything he ever wanted - but he hadn't _understood _it. He felt mismatched from Bucky in those years, out of sync in a way that rubbed at him like an ill-fitting shoe. 

“I understand now,” he tells Bucky, one evening as they sit on the porch swing and watch the golds and pinks of a setting sun. It's been a rare warm day in the middle of a snowy January. Buster is lying between them, basking in the fading rays. Steve has his reading glasses on and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant in his lap. “Why you ran from me on the river bank.”

“I wasn't running from you,” Bucky replies. One leg is folded underneath him and he's using the other foot to gently rock the swing.

Steve smiles. “Yes, you were. I was…” he struggles to explain. “I was a forest fire. I couldn't stop, swallowed up all the people around me, pointed them toward my mission.”

Bucky lays a hand on his arm.

“You needed space to be yourself,” Steve continues after a moment. He looks down at the way his hands tremble just a little at the end of a long day. “I couldn't give that to you, even though I wanted to. I didn't know how to rest and you needed to rest. You did the right thing.”

Bucky is silent but his fingers tighten on Steve’s arm as if in gratitude. 

There is plenty to do at the compound. The main buildings and living quarters are complete - but the training grounds need to be finished and they need to set up the plumbing for the lab spaces. They need a shooting range and an obstacle course and a daycare for the kids of the workers. There are new recruits to onboard and supply chains to be finalized.

Steve spends his weeks reviewing the plans and assisting where he can with the mundane tasks that come from building a base from the ground up. It's peaceful work. 

As January turns into February, Sam starts talking about politics, discussing how best to coordinate with domestic and foreign governments. 

The president won re-election and he is, if not a card-carrying member of the Undeparteds, _very _sympathetic to the growing anger against those who came back. His inaugural address is full of coded language to those who _survived _and _rebuilt the world from ashes _versus those who would _profit off of our fortitude. _Jeremy Deville is more popular than ever: he won his case against his parents in the lower court and people are anticipating it will go up to SCOTUS within months. The win lent even more legitimacy to the movement and there are politicians and business people and generals and doctors who proudly count themselves in the Undeparted ranks. They are morphing from a mob to a global force and they’ve started going by the ‘UD’, like they are a political organization and not a hate group, as they push their way into legislative discussions more and more. It’s only a matter of time, Steve thinks, before they fix their rage more steadily on the Avengers. 

“We can't do it like last time,” Steve tells Sam, sitting in front of Sam’s desk as a tractor beeps outside, two days after the new President was sworn into office. “We got that Accords stuff sprung on us. We have to be a part of the conversation from the beginning, otherwise we’ll be right back where we started.”

Sam laughs. “I think we’re both getting too old for being on the run.”

Steve grins. “Speak for yourself,” he says, even as he agrees. 

“You should be the one who goes to talk to the UN, Steve,” Sam tells him. “Everyone’s gonna trust you. We trust you. The people trust you. It should be you.”

Steve remembers Natasha in her skirt and jacket and the way she molded herself into being the figurehead because Steve couldn't bear it. He looks down at the ring, feels how it burns just a little. “Maybe,” he says, even as part of him dreads being away from the team, away from Bucky. Steve knows, though, he won't refuse Sam if it is needed. 

### 

Steve doesn't intend to start a support group. He has no real training in therapy, no fancy degrees or licenses. 

Instead, it starts as Wanda and Clint coming over once a week for lunch. Steve makes sandwiches and a pot of coffee and they sit in his living room, on his squashy chairs and couch, and talk about Nat and Vision and Pietro and Tony. Wanda pets Buster and Clint finds things around his house to fix: a squeaky hinge or a flickering bulb. 

“It's okay to feel guilt,” Steve tells them. “It's okay to miss them - but I know better than anyone that the only way to change the future is to live it.” His voice doesn’t resonate like it used to in his youth. He can hear how it goes thin and raspy over the phrases, so he tries to put as much emotion as he can into it, all the years of experience and love building up and supporting the words. _This is true_, he tells them with his eyes, _you will all be okay. _

After a couple weeks, Peter tags along behind Wanda. He takes his shoes off at the door, though Steve didn't ask, and hovers awkwardly around while Steve loads the sandwiches onto a tray. 

“Can I carry that for you?” he asks, stepping forward as soon as Steve makes to lift the tray. 

“It's sandwiches, Pete,” Steve says. 

Peter steps back, folds his arms and tucks his hands into his armpits. “I know. But, you look like my grandpa, you know? Before he died? And Aunt May would kill me if I'd let him carry that. And I know you're like actually Captain America or you were? But, here, let me carry it.”

Steve relinquishes the tray and picks up the pot of coffee. “I'm not actually about to die,” he tells the boy, following him into the living room. 

Peter shoots him an incredulous look. 

Steve wants to laugh but there's something oddly vulnerable in the kid’s expression. “Peter,” he says, once they're all seated and Buster has claimed his spot in Steve’s lap. “I'm not planning on dying anytime soon.”

“Do you regret it?” Peter asks. “Getting old back there.”

Leave it to the kid to ask the questions everyone else has been avoiding. 

“I think,” Steve says slowly. “It's what I needed to be okay here. I wish I hadn't gotten old - but I can't regret the memories or the man it made me. I can only move forward from here. That’s what we all need to do,” he repeats, stronger now. “We need to find a way to make ourselves okay with moving forward. Otherwise, what’s it all for?”

### 

In early March, Bucky shows up on his doorstep for dinner with a young Marine standing next to him. He has reddish-brown hair and green eyes and dimples on both cheeks. 

“This is Danny,” Bucky says and he seems nervous, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking at Steve from under his lashes. 

Steve grins and opens the door wider, even though Bucky didn't mention he was bringing a guest for dinner. “Come in then. I made pot roast.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Commander Rogers, sir,” Danny says, his palm sweaty when he shakes Steve’s hand. “You have a lovely home.”

When Bucky passes by him, Steve nudges his shoulder gently. He’s not exactly surprised that Bucky is bisexual - it’s not something they’ve discussed but Steve has spent most of his life across two timelines studying Bucky. No matter what, this is _Bucky_ and Steve only feels joyous privilege that he’s learning something new about his old friend; that he’s being included into another facet of Bucky’s life. 

_Thank you, _he tries to tell Bucky with his eyes and Bucky lays a hand on his wrist, squeezing back with the tiniest amount of pressure. 

They eat dinner together and Danny knocks over the wine bottle, sends the red spilling across the white tablecloth. Buster flees from the room, Danny is mortified, and Steve laughs until he cries. 

“You’ll do just fine, son,” he tells Danny and winks at Bucky. 

Danny isn’t the last person Bucky brings for dinner. Bucky is charming and handsome and caring and it’s no surprise to Steve that a string of admirers follow him wherever he goes. 

Steve’s never been like that. The serum may have made him handsome - but he never managed that easy charisma. He’s too serious and too in his own head, too stubborn. It’s sheer luck that Peggy was charmed by his bull-headed dramatics. 

Steve relishes his role as intimidating best friend, presiding over each new person with the air of a protective older brother. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, exasperated one evening. He’s on the couch with his socked feet kicked on top of the coffee table. Buster is wedged against him, rolled partially onto his back so Bucky will rub his belly. White cat hair is already smeared across Bucky’s dark jeans. “You do know all of them are convinced you’re going to kill them in their sleep if they step out of line?”

“Good,” Steve says as he takes a sip of tea. “Only the best for my best guy.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but his cheeks go a bit pink. 

He’s beautiful like this, Steve thinks, all soft and relaxed in a sweatshirt and jeans with his hair falling over his face. Buster lays trustingly against him and Bucky touches him with such tenderness. There are no weapons or straps and Steve can make out the bulk of his muscles through the sleeves. He remembers all the young women in Brooklyn, how they came over smelling of fancy perfume and with clacky shoes and their hair pinned up. They laid their small, soft hands on Bucky’s arm, already thick from the docks even then, and Bucky would grin down at them like a million bucks. 

Steve always felt a little flutter of jealousy then and it throbs again now, a faint pulse through his chest in the same spot where the warm love for Peggy burns. He frowns, traces the feeling through his heart. He’s only a little jealous that Bucky has all the best parts of love still ahead of him, he decides. 

He’s old - old enough to be Bucky’s grandfather if their outsides were accurate - and there are so many great loves in each person’s life. He wants Bucky to have his. This is his time. 

### 

Steve spends most of April in Brussels at the UN. The chief goal is the establishment of international bylaws to govern the Avengers and other enhanced persons.

T’Challa and Pepper are also on the committee to draw up the first draft and they spend almost two weeks with the other members, all jammed into a tiny conference room that overlooks a gray alley. It's tedious and mind numbing and so, so important. 

Tony and Natasha are never far from his mind as they hammer out provisions to protect themselves, the world, and future generations. They would be proud of him, he thinks, and he wishes they could see him now. 

It’s taken almost eighty years but now, finally, he's negotiating instead of fighting and running. 

He finds, almost to his surprise, that he likes it. The tactics of negotiating are similar to battle plans: the ebb and flow of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of armies. 

What he doesn't like is being far from home. He and Bucky don't talk much, with the time difference and how busy they both are. He told Bucky, before he left, to use Steve’s house for whatever he wants and he hopes Bucky is. Buster is staying with Wanda or Bucky or Sam, depending on who happens to be free.

T’Challa and he sometimes go to dinner in the evenings, little cafes around Brussels with white tablecloths and old, yellow lamps. They knew each other so briefly before, always in the context of war, and Steve relishes the opportunity to know him in peace. 

Wakanda is handling the Returned better than many nations. The government had reintegrated smoothly and their unemployment rate is already shrinking. They've been spearheading economic relief efforts to the rest of Africa, as well.

“You and Barnes should come visit,” T’Challa offers. “My sister texts with him and she shows me pictures of your cat.”

The signing ceremony for the agreement is in early May. Sam flies over the night before to go over the whole thing with Steve, line by line. 

“You did good, Steve,” he says at the end, leaning back in the uncomfortable hotel chair as he caps his red pen. “See? Isn't it better to do it this way rather than fight?”

Steve laughs as he takes off his reading glasses and stretches out his back. “Maybe you should've been the leader all along.”

Sam makes a face. “Nah. I wasn't ready back then. But, I like you like this. You're more…” he hesitates and waves a hand up and down Steve like the soft green sweater with brown elbow patches that Steve is wearing answers the question. “Gentle. Who you always were beneath all that prickliness and drama. I always liked that Steve and now I get to see him all of the time.”

“Sam.” Steve pauses and lays down his own pen. “I missed you so much,” he says after a moment. “It took forever you to be born over there.”

Sam belly laughs. 

There are protesters outside the UN the next morning, the day of the signing. He sees them as he and Sam drive together into the parking garage, clumped around the gates. 

Sam peers around Steve and then points to someone standing near the steps above the rest of the crowd. “That’s Jeremy Deville. Marie showed you one of his videos? That guy is bad news.”

Steve follows Sam’s finger. It's the first time Steve’s seen him in person. Jeremy Deville is in a blue jacket, standing with two others on a makeshift stage. His dark hair is sticking up in all directions as he yells into a megaphone about the _infestation_ and the _unfairness_ and how _the Avengers brought this upon us. _

_“_We are the Undeparted. We were chosen to remain for a reason. This is our planet. This is our time!” 

The crowd cheers as Deville lifts both hands over his head. 

Steve watches through the tinted window and tries to ignore the tiny bit of dread growing in his gut. He wants to enjoy today. When he looks across the SUV, Sam is still staring out the window, face pinched. 

"I've been talking with the FBI." Sam thunks his head back against car seat. "They want us to back off showing up at the UD riots. They say they can handle it.”

Steve studies him. “You don’t believe them.”

“No, I don’t believe them.” Sam huffs and then shakes his head. “Maria looked into it. They didn’t re-hire a single FBI agent who was Returned. None of them in the entire agency. The Director might as well be licking Deville’s feet. So no surprise that they keep insisting these attacks are just random.” Sam is quiet for a long moment as the chants thunder on from outside the tinted windows. “They could’ve stopped the fire sooner in San Francisco,” he says softly. “I saw the documents, right after you left. I don’t know about the others but…” He wipes a hand over his face. 

Steve reaches over and takes his hand. “You’re doing a good job, Sam,” he says. “Exactly what I would’ve done. We can’t save everyone but we just get up and we keep trying.”

Sam nods, swallows. He goes for a smile, even though it looks lopsided and strained. “Well, let’s enjoy today, though, huh? This has been a long time coming.”

They hold the ceremony in a large glass assembly room and Steve smiles so hard that his entire face hurts when Sam is the third signatory of the document, using the FDR pen that Tony handed Steve in Berlin all those years ago.

_We did it, Tony_, he thinks. _We actually did it._

### 

“Tell me about Peggy,” Bucky asks on one of their walks, just a few days after Steve returns from Brussels. He’s kicking stones down the path, watching them skip into the river. The sky is still pink from sunrise. Bucky had come over before dawn, letting himself in with his key and making coffee for both of them while Steve was still in bed. He hasn’t said anything, but Steve had seen the shadow of nightmares across his brow. 

Buster is shadowing their footsteps, flitting in and out of the trees as he chases birds or mice. Sometimes, he darts near the water, peering over the edge like he can spot a fish. 

Steve has his hands in his pockets, feeling his joints creak as he steps on the uneven ground. He's staring at his feet, concentrating on his footing. The weather is getting humid and it's making his knees ache in the morning until the loosen up a little. “She was so brilliant,” he says. “That’s what I remember the most. She never forgot a face or a name or a weird fact. She’d read a book once and be able to quote whole passages from it. I always felt like I was two steps behind her.”

Bucky bends down and scoops up one of the smooth stones. He flings it out over the water. He doesn’t look at Steve as the stone bounces across the waves before sinking deep. 

“It’s funny,” Steve tells him. “I don’t know if she and I would’ve worked had I just come home from the war in 1945. I was too naive, idealistic. Peggy was always more grounded.” He looks down at the knees of his slacks, how even his feet seem smaller now than they did when he was young; not as small as before the serum, but still shrunken. “But, twelve years in the future can make a pragmatist out of anyone.”

“So how have you changed now?” Bucky turns to face him fully, the sunset glimmering behind his head. 

Steve gazes back at him, sees the years behind his blue eyes. “I like to think I’m less stubborn. I’m happier. I hope I'm more deliberate. I don't always have to be the one fighting. I don't charge in half-cocked. ”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah. I remember that.”

“I mean it, Buck.” Steve shakes his head. “I know I was an asshole when we were kids and you were just trying to help. And, after Siberia, I should’ve stayed with you in Wakanda longer. I should've been less bullheaded.”

“I shouldn’t have gone back into cryo,” Bucky says quietly. “I should’ve let you help me instead of running. I shouldn’t have left you on that bank.”

Steve swallows. “None of that matters now,” he says. “I found you. You found me. You vanished into thin air and I lived seventy years in the past. Yet, somehow, we’re back together.”

“And now you’re slow enough for me to catch you next time you try to do something stupid.” Bucky leans close and jostles their arms together. “That’s the best part.”

Steve presses a hand to his chest. “I’ve matured, James Barnes. I would never do something stupid.”

Somewhere behind them, Buster makes a coughing noise like he has a hairball.

Bucky rolls his eyes and drops an arm over Steve’s stooped shoulders. “Yeah, you’re still a punk, old man.”

### 

Peter graduates from high school in late June to much fanfare. Steve attends with May and Pepper and Morgan and Happy. Bucky and Sam are both out of the country but they send Steve with a truly ugly card, a twenty dollar bill stuck inside of it. Steve wears a baseball hat and whistles as loud as he can when Peter walks across the stage. 

When he turns, Pepper is misty-eyed and with the tiniest bit of red at the edges of her nose. “Tony would’ve loved to be here,” she says quietly, so only Steve hears. She’s almost as tall as him in her heels and Steve wraps an arm around her waist, the familiar grief piling up inside his lungs. 

Tony didn't talk about Peter much after those first devastating words as he stumbled off of the spaceship. The empty spaces where he should’ve talked about Peter said more than words ever could have.

Steve’s eyes burn as Peter accepts his diploma and waves it over his head. 

He didn't know Peter well at all before the Decimation: only that quick meeting at the airport in Germany and then whatever tidbits Wanda passed on secondhand from Vision. Now, though, Steve has a sense of obligation to the kid, almost the same way he does Morgan. 

Peter is planning to head to MIT in the fall, finish his education before he officially joins the Avengers. The summer in between graduation and starting as a college freshman, he comes out to the compound at least once a week, doing drills with Wanda and Clint, sometimes even with Bucky or Sam if they’re around. 

Steve really isn't sure who brings up the idea of fishing. At one of their “eat sandwiches and talk about their feelings” gatherings (as Clint calls them), Peter may have mentioned no one had ever taken him. Or, maybe Sam and Bucky started talking about traditional family bonding activities. Maybe it was Wanda or Pepper or…

It doesn't matter. 

What matters is that at five a.m. sharp on a Saturday morning in late August, Peter and Steve climb aboard a little motor boat down at the docks near the compound. Someone scrounged up a box of fishing tackle and some poles and the gear lies in a jumbled pile in the bottom of the boat as they putter out into open water. 

Steve tried to leave Buster at home, but the cat threw a fit so now he’s sitting in the stern, gazing at the whole proceeding with an air of exasperated concern as his tail twitches.

“Are there even fish in this area?” Peter asks doubtfully, staring over the side. 

“I saw dolphins once,” Steve says. “After the Decimation.”

Peter twists to look at him. “We can’t fish dolphins.” He sounds scandalized and Steve tries and fails to keep a straight face. 

“I've never been fishing at all,” he admits and Buster harrumphs. Steve turns to look at him and the cat blinks at him innocently. 

“Haven't you been alive for like,” - Peter tilts his head back and eyes the sky as he adds years together in his head - “at least a century.”

“Fishing wasn't exactly on my bucket list.” Steve kills the motor and drops the little anchor over the side. “But I have some ideas. I watched it on the YouTube last night.”

Peter doesn’t quite laugh at the joke but does roll his eyes like he knows what Steve is trying to do. Then his eyes fall as he picks at a piece of peeling paint on the edge of the tiny motorboat. “It's weird,” he tells him, when the silence has stretched for awhile. “You look like this super old guy but you know about YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and like, memes.”

“I don't know anything about TikTok,” Steve returns as he picks up one of the fishing poles. Someone was nice enough to already secure the reel and thread the clear line through the little holes. Theoretically, all he needs to do is get a hook on the end. “Or whatever that…” he makes a gesture like a cigarette. “Vaping? Whatever that is.”

Peter eyeballs him. “It's weird.”

“I was basically thirty-one when the Snap happened,” Steve tells him as he pulls a single silver hook from the tackle box. “It's not that weird.”

The look Peter gives him clearly indicates that thirty-one is also _old. _

Steve sighs and tries to focus on threading the line through the top of the hook. He frowns. His fingers are shakier doing this than they would've been back in the day. “Getting old doesn't mean you stop living. It just means you have more experience behind you so maybe trends seem less important because you've seen how many have come and gone.”

Peter shifts in his seat, turning away from Steve like he’s trying to hide his face. 

Buster edges close to the side of the boat and cranes his neck over the edge, peering down at the water like he can see the fish himself. He wouldn’t try to jump in, right? Steve watches him long enough to make sure and then looks back at Peter.

“There's all these people,” Peter says after a moment. “We were the same age, back before, and now they're in college or they have jobs or they're married. The last thing I can remember about them is that they were getting a D in biology or worrying about who to ask to the dance. They tried to do this reunion thing at my school? Where people who had been your grade came back to talk about what they did now and like…” he shakes his head. “It's weird. I didn’t know what to say to them.”

Steve pulls out the small tub of bait and smushes some of the pink jelly eggs together so they'll go on the hook. It doesn't look right, but he perseveres. “It's not easy when people move on without you.” He hands the prepared pole to Peter. “I don't think I got over what happened to me for a long time.”

Peter nods as he takes the pole. “I'm glad you came back,” he says quietly. 

The sun is starting to spill golden rays across the water and Steve smiles. “Me too, Pete.”

Behind them, there is a sudden splash, water spraying over Steve’s back and Peter’s face. Buster lets out a yowl and Steve spins around, half ready to dive overboard and pull his idiot cat out of the river.

Instead, a large, silvery fish flops at the bottom of the boat and Buster is sitting primly in his spot, licking one of his paws. He puts the paw down after a second and stares at Steve like _What? Fishing is hard?_

“Your cat is really weird,” Peter says. 

Steve ends up throwing the poor, confused fish back in the water, much to Buster’s seeming disappointment. 

### 

It seems Natasha will always live in the corner of his eye. Almost seventy years later and he still sometimes turns to her to ask a question, surprised when he remembers she’s not there. 

He often ends up under the spreading oak trees, on the low bench, unmoving as he stares at her name on the memorial he designed for her. It’s late autumn and he’s there again, hunched against the sharp breeze coming inland. A heavy rain is falling, cold and quick and soaking his jacket. 

Even after all this time, the grief over her loss still catches him unawares, sneaking up and consuming him whole. 

_See you in a minute. _

The Natasha in the other reality... she was fire and lightning and he’d loved her so. But, he spent the worst five years of his long life with the Natasha of this timeline. They'd been bound together and losing her was an almost unmatched agony. 

It was only the two of them most of the time, rattling around in an empty compound, trying to keep themselves sane in the face of the Decimation. He made himself better for her, tamped down all of that grief and the worst parts of himself because she was fighting on and he couldn’t let her do it alone. 

He held her and was held by her. She was the only grounding force that he had left.

Steve knows, true as anything, he wouldn’t have survived the five years if it wasn’t for her - not in any way that resembled himself, at least. 

“Survival is insufficient,” she told him, the first time it was them alone, after they failed to kill Thanos, all of the others stumbling off to deal with their grief in their own way. “That’s from Star Trek. We have to live. We have to help people. We can’t let it all be for nothing.”

In those five years, they took on the burdens that suited them best. She coordinated from the shadows and Steve walked into the light, telling people to let this loss make them stronger: to bend around the grief but not break from it. He got so good at it, finding the positives in a world gone dark. He even let part of himself believe it, so others could believe it too, maybe find some of their own solace in the horror. With Nat, though, he was still able to feel the agony that hadn’t left since Bucky vanished right before his eyes. 

“What you did,” he tells her stone now. The sharp grief of losing her roils in his gut. “You gave it all back. To me. To everyone. I hope you’ve seen that.”

“You’re gonna catch your death out here,” Bucky says, coming up from behind. “Where’s your coat, old man?”

A chuckle catches on top of the grief in Steve’s throat. “I’m older than you now, you know. You can stop bossing me around.”

Bucky sits down next to him, hands tucked into the front of his jacket. “Nah,” he says. “I’m always gonna be older than you, no matter what you look like, pal.” 

Steve curls his gnarled fingers into a fist around the ring. “I miss her,” he says and hears the tears in his voice. “No one was like her. Not in any dimension. She was the one who was with me and…”

When he can’t go on, Bucky drops an arm over his shoulders, pulling him close. “We need to get you inside. You’re shaking all over.”

Bucky levers him off the bench, guiding him the rest of the way to his little house. Steve’s teeth are chattering now, from sorrow or cold he can’t tell, and his shoes squelch in the mud. He hadn’t noticed how heavy the rain had become. 

“You’re soaked,” Bucky tells him, sitting him down on the edge of his bed. Buster is winding around their feet, meowing worriedly. 

Bucky gets a towel from the bathroom, rubs it over Steve’s head. “Next time you need to take a bath, there’s a perfectly good river, Steve. Or you know, your bathtub. There’s indoor plumbing now, in case you forgot.”

Steve lets Bucky take off his jacket and his shirt, strip him down to his underwear, and rub another towel over his shoulders. He lets Bucky wrap blankets around him, settle him in the center of his bed and pull the coverlet up to his chin. Buster curls up on his chest.

Bucky lays down next to him then, pets Buster and runs his hand down Steve’s arm. “There,” he says. “Just getting you warmed up. See? You’re okay.”

Steve closes his eyes and falls asleep, Bucky’s warmth settling over him like a furnace.

### 

The first real escalation from the Undeparted comes three days after Thanksgiving, a week after the Supreme Court rules in favor of Jeremy Deville in the case against his parents. It hadn’t surprised anyone: none of the four Returned judges had been allowed to retake their seats. 

Steve happens to be near the hangar when the klaxons sound and he gets to the quinjet bay as Sam and Bucky run up from the opposite direction. Wanda is already there, running through the launch sequence in the cockpit, while Maria checks the weapons bay.

“Where is it?” Steve asks. He stands near the ramp, so tempted to step into the back of the quinjet. What would he do? Make them tea on the ride over? Intimidate the bad guys with his elbow patches?

Sam is focused and serious, goggles already pulled down over his eyes. “Philadelphia,” he says. “Sounds like there was an explosion.”

Bucky is pressing on his earpiece with one hand and carrying a case of rifles with the other. “Two explosions. At a halfway house and a foster center, one right after another so they were probably coordinated. We can be there in forty minutes.”

“I can…” Steve starts, steps forward, and then stops. Because what can he do? This isn’t his team. This isn’t his fight. He’s benched himself. He thought he was able to fix everything with plans and foresight but instead, he’s taken himself out of the game. He still has the title of Commander that they gave him in D.C. - but it's more of an honorific than anything else at this point. 

“We’ll be okay,” Bucky tells him. 

Steve turns his head and Bucky is staring back at him, gaze soft like he can hear all the things that Steve isn’t saying. 

“I mean it,” Bucky says, setting the carrier down on the floor of the quinjet with a thump. “We’ll be fine. We learned from you.” 

“Barnes!” Sam shouts and Bucky salutes once as the ramp closes behind him and the engines power up as the hangar door yawns open. 

Steve stands in the empty space and puts his hands into the pockets of his cardigan, waits there until the quinjet is gone from view and he can’t hear the rumble of the engines. He walks home to Buster and makes some tea in a large mug. He puts on his reading glasses and sits in his big soft chair with Buster in his lap, stroking his smooth, gray and white fur. He tries to read his book, tries to draw a little, tries to work on a crossword. He gives up when the sun starts to set and makes dinner instead, heating up a frozen lasagna. Buster gets his canned food in a little dish and he snuffles at it appreciatively while Steve gets out silverware and plates. It’s only when he’s setting everything out on a tray that he realizes he’s instinctively putting together a meal for Bucky as well as himself. 

He stares down at the extra plate and food and swallows hard.

After a long moment, he carefully scrapes the extra lasagna into a Tupperware and stores it in the refrigerator. Bucky is always starving after a mission. It’ll keep. 

He eats dinner alone with his tray in front of the TV and watches the evening news, cellphone propped on the side table so he’ll notice the second Bucky reaches out. Buster is at the top of his cat tree, bright eyes fixed out the window like he's waiting for Bucky to arrive as well. There’s a two minute segment on the explosion in Philly and he peers at the corners of the screen to maybe catch a glimpse of Bucky. He sees nothing. 

They do show a UD rally: fifty thousand people out in San Diego. Jeremy Deville is there and they run a whole segment on him, how he won his case before the Supreme Court, striking a blow for the rights of the UD. It makes Steve’s stomach churn and he turns off the TV, sitting in silence as he waits. 

Finally, when his second cup of tea has gone cold and Buster is snoring softly in his lap, he gets the _all clear back in 4 hours _text from Bucky. Steve stares at the little text bubble for a long time, the tight knot around his lungs finally relaxing. 

_Glad to hear it_, he replies, _I’ll put a plate in the oven if you want dinner when you’re back._ It takes him awhile to get up, the release of anxiety making him feel shaky all the way down to the bottoms of his feet. He breathes deeply and squeezes his eyes shut. 

Bucky’s okay. 

Steve nods to himself once and then locks his phone, before gently transferring Buster from his lap onto the couch cushions.

The cat makes a grumpy noise and Steve presses a kiss to his head. “Bucky is safe,” he tells Buster. “He’ll be here when we wake up tomorrow.”

Buster studies him with his bright eyes, like he's checking at that Steve is telling the truth. Finally, he sighs and relaxes back, stretching out on his side.

He goes to the kitchen first, putting together a plate for Bucky from the leftover lasagna and setting it in the warm oven. After a moment of thought, he takes a yellow sticky note from his desk and scrawls out _welcome home _and sticks it on the oven handle where Bucky is sure to see it. Then, he puts out a pillow on the couch, places the neatly folded cashmere knit blanket that Bucky favors right next to it. Maybe Bucky will decide that he doesn’t want to sleep alone back at the barracks tonight. 

Steve checks his phone one last time, after he's brushed his teeth and washed his face. When there’s no more word from Bucky, he changes into his pajamas and lies down in his bed.

Buster leaps up next to him and circles around a few times before delicately settling himself against Steve’s ribs. He props his chin against Steve’s stomach and closes his eyes.

Steve rubs his head once and then turns off the lamp, leaning back on his pillow. He can’t sleep so he stares at the moon and trees casting long shadows that look like knobby fingers across the ceiling. Beneath the covers, he traces the smooth surface of the ring, imagining he can feel the power simmering below the ordinary surface. Finally, he closes his eyes and counts backward from one thousand slowly. 

He falls asleep and dreams of Tony’s gauntlet, of how rainbows filled the room as Bruce snapped his fingers. 

### 

Bruce’s offices and labs are at the opposite end of the compound from Steve’s house. They were all especially designed and built with Bruce’s size in mind. Bruce spent months on them, getting each tiny detail exactly how he wanted it. 

Steve finds them a little cold: white, smooth walls and shiny metal and slick floors; but Bruce has always felt at home in labs. He and Bruce have always been friendly, polite coworkers more than friends. 

Now, Bruce spends a lot of time on the West Coast, helping Scott and Hope build up the team out there. His arm still isn't back to full strength from when he snapped. He wears it in a sling most of the time and Steve can see the ropey green scars extending up his wrist and forearm. 

Steve comes over in mid December, on an especially gusty day. His eyes feel gritty and his joints ache worse than usual.

Bruce makes him coffee and Steve sits on his long couch. 

“What did you see,” he asks when they've talked about the weather and the compound and Bruce’s latest experiments. “When you snapped?”

Bruce watches his spoon swirl the cream into his coffee. “Steve…”

“You don't have to tell me,” Steve says softly. “But, I’d like to…. It was Natasha, wasn't it?”

A silence stretches between them, their shared grief filling up the space. Steve remembers why they don't talk frequently. The weight of their sorrow would crush each other. It's easier to ignore when they’re not looking directly at someone who aches with it too. Clint had made the decision to move back to his farm with his family at the end of summer. Steve knows it’s partly because everything here still reminds him of her.

“It was her,” Bruce confirms. He takes off his glasses and closes his eyes. His left hand comes up and he rubs the scars along the outside of his arm. “She told me it was worth it. All of it. That she didn't regret a single thing and I shouldn't either.”

Steve knots his fingers together around the coffee cup. The dark red sweater he's wearing today has a tiny hole at the seam near his wrist and he stares at it.

“Does it get easier?” Bruce asks and Steve knows exactly what he's wondering. 

“You get used to it,” he says and winces at how raspy his voice is. “But I miss her and Tony every day. That's not something that goes away.”

“If there was any way to bring her back,” Bruce says. “I would have. Tony would have.”

Steve nods. “I know.” He thinks about all the things that he wants: half-formed desires and dreams and longings. His hand clenches until the ring is pressed tight enough to turn the skin white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 (2026) will be posted on Saturday. Thank you again for all your comments. They have been so encouraging to get!!


	5. 2026

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2026, Steve starts to find his place.

### 2026

The team is fully operational around three years after Thanos. Steve has an office on the top floor of the new compound, overlooking the wide river all the way to New York. Even when he's sitting down at his desk, he can see the hangar bay and the launch pad and the drive down to the highway as the teams leave and return from saving the world. A little plaque next to his door says “Commander Steven G. Rogers” and it never stops being slightly odd to walk by every morning.

He forces himself to focus on the day-to-day operations of the base, getting enough toilet paper or energy bars shipped in or making sure the sink on the first floor of the common area stops flooding. He needs to leave the fighting to the young ones. 

“I got good at keeping things running for Peggy,” he tells Bucky late one night. He’s in his night robe and slippers, sitting on the couch while the fire burns low in front of them. 

Bucky came back from a mission and went straight to Steve, still in his tac outfit with mud on his face. Steve was woken from his bed by Bucky opening his front door, even though he’d been careful to be quiet. Now, Bucky’s sitting on the rug, wedged between Steve’s legs and the coffee table with his arms around his knees, staring out at the wind banging branches against the window. Buster is perched on the side table next to him, upright and staring at the door like he's keeping guard. 

Steve’s been talking softly for the last hour, keeping his voice just louder than the sound of the river outside so Bucky can follow it home. He flexes his toes in his slippers, feels how the joints have started to stiffen from staying in the same position. “I finally learned how to cook a few things, can you believe it. Peggy thought I was hopeless but you know me. I’m pretty stubborn. After Bucky… after that Bucky came home, I had a lot of time to stay in with him, until he was doing better. I got one of Peggy’s cookbooks and went at it. Almost burned down the kitchen a few times. But, now I can at least make a few dishes. They didn’t have an automatic dishwasher until 1960. Did you know that? I got one as soon as I could. Didn’t know how lucky I was here.” 

He doesn’t know what exactly happened on the mission. Bucky didn't say and he didn't ask. They were somewhere on the West coast, he knows. He heard rumblings that the Undeparteds were building up a large presence on the central coast of California, cordoning off sections for themselves. One of the larger camps of Returned was outside Santa Barbara and the tension was simmering. Jeremy Deville had gone out there, holding a huge rally at the university. He’d been ramping up his rhetoric, talking about _the struggle _and _fighting back _and _taking what's ours by any means necessary. _Two weeks ago, a fringe group of the UD had bombed a work placement center outside Charleston. The month before that it had been a church in Boston. He hasn’t seen the news out of California recently, but he can imagine: he’s seen the pictures from the other attacks. It must’ve been bad. 

Steve takes a deep breath and keeps talking, running his fingers through Bucky’s tangled hair, working gently through the knots and smoothing out the thick strands that are a tiny bit damp. He must’ve showered on the quinjet but there are smudges of dirt and old blood along his hairline that have been missed. “I told them all about you. Peggy and Bucky and Steve. How you went through hell and somehow still came back to me, still saved me. I told them about your goats and your plum trees.”

Bucky blinks up at him. His faraway gaze is coming back, creeping slowly like the frost toward the ocean. His pale flesh hand slides from the folds of his coat and Steve reaches down with his wrinkled one. Their fingers twine together and Buster relaxes, slumping over so his chin is resting on Bucky’s shoulder. 

“I’m here, Buck,” Steve says. “I’m right here. I’m with you. End of the line, pal.”

The warm spot in his chest glows as Bucky leans into his legs. They are home.

Carol Danvers and Rhodey come for a visit as spring starts to break. Steve hasn’t seen either one of them since they left together shortly after Tony’s funeral.

“I’d always wanted to try space,” Rhodey told Steve the night before they left. They were sitting together on Tony’s porch, drinking the good whisky from Tony’s cabinet. “I thought about going for the space program at one point. But the timing was never right.”

“And now it is?” Steve asked. 

Rhodey stared across the dark lake, like he could see where Carol’s ship was waiting. “I met her once,” he said. “Back before she crashed that plane. I was this kid at West Point and she came to talk to our class about being a test pilot. She was everything I wanted to be.” He paused. “She still is.”

Now, they sit side by side in the large conference room on the top floor of the compound. Sam is at the head of the table, Bruce and Maria across from him. Stephen Strange and Hope are there too, with Clint and Shuri on video conference. Steve sits at the foot of the table, a chair empty next to him. Bucky, Scott and Wanda are off in Georgia, something about a potential UD threat to the water supply of Atlanta.

On the screen, the six Infinity Stones shimmer. 

“When Thanos destroyed the Stones,” Bruce says, “this timeline lost one of its fundamental building blocks. They were the balancing forces of our reality. During the first years, we were a little too busy to notice the changes - but now, they’re becoming apparent.”

“The Time Stone was our key defense against the dark forces threatening our very reality,” Strange says. “Without it, we have been vulnerable.”

“Every planet is affected,” Danvers says. “Without the Stones to provide a counter balance, I think we’ll see more wars, more natural disasters, more disease, more unrest. We have to be prepared for things to get worse.”

Steve runs his thumb around the perfectly smooth surface of the ring as Danvers brings up a map of the whole solar system. 

_Not yet_, it says and Steve wonders how much that sentiment comes from his own heart. As soon as he lets this secret out into the universe, there will be a countdown over his head, a finite amount of time remaining before it will no longer be safe to stay here. 

The entire planet feels like it’s on a knife’s edge. What will Jeremy Deville and the UD do if they know the secrets in Steve’s ring? 

He squeezes his hands tighter and then tries to relax when Sam shoots him a look of concern. 

Sam cocks a brow. _You alright, man?_

Steve nods and looks straight ahead at Carol while she talks about coordinated efforts to keep the more vulnerable parts of the galaxy safe. He keeps his face impassive. Sam can’t know, no matter how much Steve wishes he could tell him. 

He would have to go, leave the compound and his friends and Bucky. He’ll have to spend years hiding, running, waiting for the stones to be mature enough to be spread among people who can protect them. It will be years without Bucky. 

Steve can’t stand that thought. 

The compound is bustling now, almost back to the way it was before the Accords. The parking lot by the offices is full every morning, admins and techs commuting in from the city to work with the Avengers. They make a point to hire both Returned and those that had been left behind in equal measure. With all the turmoil boiling across the globe, it’s important, Steve thinks, to emphasize that the Avengers support both groups. 

Buster loves the increased activity. His favorite spot is sprawled on the porch swing of Steve’s house, carefully monitoring the comings and goings of all the different workers. Steve lets him do his own thing during the day for the most part. Sometimes, he shows up at Steve’s office and lounges on the windowsill while Steve makes calls or types emails. Other times, he prowls around the hangar or the launch bay, following Bucky around like a shadow. Occasionally, he turns up in weird places: locked rooms or the roof of the hangar. People get used to him and always carry him back to Steve if he gets too underfoot.

Steve strokes the soft fur behind his ears as the cat drapes himself over his shoulders. “I don’t care where you go,” he tells Buster, “as long as you eventually come back.”

Buster rumbles an agreement.

In early summer, Jeremy Deville features the Avengers in his podcast. “They’re the ones who brought them back and now they're giving them jobs!” he rails. Soon enough, UD protesters start showing up at their front gates. They wave signs: _Send them back. What’s dead should stay dead. Don’t hire zombies. _

Steve turns his ring around and around his finger and focuses on the good he can do. 

After Bucky’s late night visit, Steve starts lingering in the control room when Bucky and Sam are out together. First, he sits quietly in the back, listening to the comms and the analysts speaking calmly over them, feeding information to Bucky and Sam. Maria Hill is in charge and Steve has always been impressed by her sharp and quick mind. 

Then, on one mission, she asks for his thoughts on a tactical assault and Steve ends up at the big whiteboard at the front of the room, sketching out battle lines and routes. He hadn’t wanted to interfere before that - these are the new leaders and he wants to defer to them as they carry the torch forward. But, as he focuses on strategy again, his brain opens up, the familiar decisions and countermeasures becoming clear once again. He missed it so.

It becomes routine after that, Hill and him sitting by the tac board, sketching attack plans together. She’s a little awkward around him at first, but it fades with as their discussions lengthen. She starts teasing him now and then, sarcastic barbs that remind him of Dugan.

Steve loves it, passing on his experience and knowledge to her. He didn’t know her in the other timeline - but here, she becomes a true friend, filling some of the hole the loss of Natasha’s friendship had left inside of him. 

She rolls her eyes at him and eyes him knowingly, like she can see past the layers of years and bullshit to the soft core of Steve Rogers. 

Buster becomes a fixture as well, stretched on top of tall filing cabinets like a sphinx as he observes the proceedings. One of the analysts starts bringing in a large jar of cat treats and Buster is slowly coaxed from his aloof perch to prowl among the desks for the little morsels. He always leaves with Steve, though, hopping up to drape himself around Steve’s neck as the day draws to a close.

The Undeparted are still growing in number, building cells and militias across continents as Deville’s calls for protest and violence escalate. They're getting bolder and Maria is uneasy, face darkening at each new riot or shooting or explosion. 

“They're not stopping,” she tells Steve, staring up at the world map, each UD attack marked with a red light. They’re popping up in India and Russia and Europe and Canada and South America now. The US looks like it has the chicken pox. “People kept saying, give it time. They'll peter out. People will move on. But,” she gestures to the map and then bites at her thumbnail. 

“The FBI keeps calling them lone wolves,” she says. “They refuse to look at patterns. I can’t say they’re working with them, I don’t have proof - but they’re definitely helping them by just turning a blind eye to all of this. When we got to that explosion in Charleston, they hadn’t even set up a perimeter. If we hadn’t stepped in…” she trails off. 

Steve closes his eyes, pushes his ring up to his knuckle and back down. He knows bullies. He’s known them since he was a kid. “We have to be prepared for it to get worse before it gets better.”

They have a staff picnic in May, not specifically on the day that everyone came back, but close enough that it counts. Everyone brings their families and significant others and dogs. Clint and his family make the drive out, showing up the night before in a giant RV that’s currently parked alongside the hangar. Even Scott and Hope fly in from the West Coast and Strange shows up, dour and pinched, in a long sleeve shirt despite the heat. 

Buster follows Steve over in the morning, but as more and more guests start arriving, he vanishes into the nearby trees. Several times through out the day, Steve spots the flash of his green eyes as he lurks just out of reach.

There are kites and volleyballs and even a croquet set, along with two bounce houses and a game of flag football. Bruce is giving children piggyback rides across the grass and Clint is holding archery lessons.

Sam and Bucky man the grills and Bucky uses his metal hand to flip the patties and turn the hot dogs. They're easy with each other, hamming it up for all the kids and employees who don't get to interact with them on a day-to-day basis.

It reminds Steve so sharply of being twenty-one years old and watching Bucky work a dance hall that he loses his breath for a moment. There were times, back between Romania and Siberia and Wakanda, that he thought he'd never see Bucky like this again, that the most he could hope for was Bucky to find peace. To see Bucky _happy_ does funny things to his chest that he can only barely name. 

Steve knows things aren't perfect: the UD are looming and Bucky is out almost every week with Sam on missions. He knows that there are burdens that keep Bucky awake at night and haunt his days. But, that had been 1939, too: Bucky scrounges up happiness, uncovers joy, like a bear chasing honey. 

He's sitting at the picnic table next to them, wearing a blue baseball cap and jeans. His job is to hand out ice cream bars to the kids and to pour sangria from a big jug for the adults. The world might be in chaos, but here at least, there is happiness. 

Morgan comes and sits on the bench right beside him, swinging her legs back and forth. She's almost eight now, growing like a weed. She has Pepper's height. Her eyes, though, are all Tony's. 

"I'm gonna be a superhero when I grow up," she tells Steve as she delicately eats the chocolate shell from the ice cream bar. The vanilla is running down the stick, staining her hands. 

"You are?" he says. The last time they talked about this, she wanted to be a zookeeper. "Just like your dad?"

"Yep," she says. "But also like Sam. I want wings! And, like Hope. I want to be able to get small. And Bucky said he would teach me to shoot a gun when I was older. And I'll get special powers like Wanda and be super smart like Shuri." 

Steve smiles at her. What would it have been like to grow up with all these superheroes close at hand, he wonders. Steve runs his hand over her shiny brown hair. "You know, your dad wasn't a superhero until he was almost forty so you have a lot of time before you need to make any decisions."

"I know," she says. "But, it's important. At school, they were making fun of one of the girls that used to be older than us but now she's the same age. I want to be able to stop that."

"Yeah?" Grief and pride well up in his chest and he swallows. The sun seems very bright and he squints. Bucky is watching him from behind the grill, he realizes, a soft smile on his face. "Your dad would be so proud of you," he tells Morgan, as his eyes meet Bucky’s. He hopes Tony would be proud of all of this: Sam, the compound, Steve, Bucky. 

Someone calls Morgan's name and she runs off with a quick wave, ponytail bouncing behind her. He watches her for a moment and then his gaze is drawn, as it always is, back to Bucky.

He's back to leaning over the grill, the dark blue T-shirt he's wearing damp with sweat at the back of his neck. His hair is in a bun, wispy strands frizzing in all directions. He's laughing at something Sam said and the sunlight is glowing around him, filling up with his infectious joy. 

Steve leans back and lets warmth seep into his old bones. No matter what happens, he thinks, this is what makes it all worth it.

Two days after the picnic, a church in Denver is fire-bombed. A week later, a UD rally in Billings leads to almost twenty stores being destroyed. Bucky and Sam only have seven hours home between the two. 

After that, Bucky and Sam are out almost every week on new reports of unrest or violence. The FBI still insists they don't have to come - but no one on the team has any faith that they really care about protecting the Returned. There are riots in Miami and arson attacks in Texas. The entire Returned camp near Santa Barbara is infected with Norovirus from a purposefully contaminated food delivery, leading to quarantine and the deaths of two kids and three elderly. In Fort Worth, the city has divided itself: UD neighborhoods where the Returned aren't welcome. The violent fringe element of the UD is becoming almost mainstream among the group, even as the general public starts to back away. 

Steve is relegated to standing in the control room while they risk themselves in the field. He listens over the comms, knotting his hands together so his fingers don’t shake. Every time Sam or Bucky or anyone else takes a hit he thinks, _I should be there_. _I should be putting my body between them and damage. They counted on me and I…_

Bucky and Sam are a fantastic team. Their voices are always sharp and clear across the comms, already sharing a private language that only they know. Bucky takes the land assaults and Sam will cover from above, working in a seamless dance that Steve has done with both of them at different times over the last century. He’s so proud of them. 

Steve always tries to meet them on the tarmac when they come home from missions. He brings water bottles and coffee and sandwiches. Sometimes, they’re banged up enough to need the infirmary and he always goes with them, even if all he can do is sit beside them while the nurses clean up their scrapes and bruises. 

He never forgets that Sam doesn’t have the serum; that Sam could take a hit and, and…

They’re both wearing thin. Bucky tries to shoulder as much of the mantle of leadership as he can, just like he did with Steve. He takes over the training of the new recruits so Sam can focus on political relations with congress. He handles the duty roster and runs the weekly team meetings with the West Coast HQ. 

Steve loves sitting in the back of the conference rooms while Bucky runs the staff meetings, seeing him up there with his metal arm on full display and a powerpoint of best practices for weapons maintenance or the correlation between cities with high unemployment rates and increased Undeparted presence. He’s thriving. 

Steve still handles a lot of the supply chain and operations management - though, lately, he’s been passing most of the ops tasks to a young woman named Corrie who has her MBA from MIT so he can help out Maria with tactics. When Bucky isn’t on a mission, they meet once a week in Steve’s office and go over the mundane aspects of keeping a base of over one hundred onsite personnel and three hundred commuters running on a day-to-day basis.

“You’re better at this than I would’ve expected,” Bucky tells him, sitting across from him one day in late summer. He’s in a T-shirt and tac pants and he has a pen tucked behind one ear like he’s a college kid and not the second-in-command of the Avengers. He squints at Steve, cocking his head. “I like you this way.”

A flutter of pride beats against the inside of his heart. “Well I gotta be useful somewhere,” he says, tipping his chin down so he can meet Bucky’s eyes over the top of his reading glasses. “Kind of useless out in the field now.”

Bucky’s gaze goes glassy for a second, out the window toward the city. He’s been doing that more lately, fading inside his own head too easily, caught up in whatever he sees when the UD hits another target. He’s been having more nightmares, preferring to sleep fitfully on Steve’s couch rather than return back to the small room at the barracks. “You don’t want to be out there, Steve,” he says quietly, after a long moment. “You got out for a good reason. Now it’s our turn to carry it.”

Steve nods but the words do nothing to ease the sourness in his gut. He does what he can: he keeps the base running smoothly, brings the sandwiches and coffee and water, lets Bucky sit on his couch late into the night. He worries and frets and rubs the ring between his fingers. 

Every time they come home safely, he breathes out a long sigh and the ring stays dormant on his hand.

In late summer, on a day where the air feels like it’s going to crack open and pour rain at any moment, Steve walks up the stairs to the team dormitories and enters his access code to get in the wide glass door. The halls and common areas still have that smooth, gloss quality they did when he lived here as Captain America but there’s also softer touches. Thick plush couches have replaced the utilitarian, modern pieces that Tony had favored. Steve doesn’t come here often - he remembers how precious this space had been to his team, all those years ago. He doesn’t want to intrude on their space - he’s not one of them now.

Buster knows this place better and he darts up the hall, pausing right in front of a slightly cracked door. He sits there patiently, tail flicking as he waits for Steve to catch up to him.

Steve smiles. “I’m coming,” he tells the cat. He smooths his hands down his pants, pushing away imaginary wrinkles before he knocks, even though the door itself is partially open. "Buck?" he calls.

Bucky and Sam had come home from a mission the week before and, after briefly greeting them on the tarmac, he hasn't seen Bucky at all. Not that Bucky has to come visit him, but Steve's gotten used to their quiet, companionable evenings. Beyond that, Buster misses Bucky. The cat has taken to crankily pacing by the door when Bucky usually arrives and glaring at Steve with accusing eyes. 

Now, Buster is winding around his ankles, glaring up at the door. He followed Steve all the way here, almost herding him across the compound toward the team’s dorms.

There's a muffled thud like someone put their feet down in a hurry and then Bucky is pulling the door the rest of the way open a few moments later. "Hey!" he says, running a hand over his hair. It's flattened on one side and puffy on the other. "Didn't know you were coming by."

Buster darts in past Bucky's feet, prowling around the room like he's checking things over. "Hello to you too, sweetheart,” Bucky tells the cat, staring after him.

Bucky's room is one of the bigger ones on this corridor. A double bed is pushed up against the window with a lamp on the side table next to it. The dark blue blankets are mussed and a pair of tac pants are draped over the footboard. His laptop is open on the large desk and stacks of paper are piled high around it. A pot is bubbling on the stove of the little kitchenette and Bucky flips the burner off. 

There's a small couch in front of a coffee table and a flat screen that's showing CNN. An opened bottle of beer is on the coffee table and a book is face down, pages spread next to it.

"I don't mean to interrupt," Steve starts, twisting his ring around his finger. 

"No, it's fine. Do you want soup?" Bucky gestures with the pan. "I was just heating it up."

"I'm good." Steve stands a little awkwardly, shoves his hands in the pockets of his cardigan. It’s one of his favorite ones, the one that Bucky has always said looks soft. "I haven't... you haven't been around for a few days. I know you're busy but Buster's been cranky and I thought..."

"Yeah. Yeah." Bucky turns around and puts the soup pan down. His shoulders are taut. "I know I haven't come by in awhile."

Steve sits down on the couch, wincing as his hip sticks a little, and Buster jumps up next to him. "Sam told me that the last couple missions have been bad."

Bucky doesn't move from where he's leaned over the stove. "Yeah."

"I don't..." Steve trails off and rubs his hand over his hair, directing his gaze to the muted television. He wants to help. He wants to shoulder the load like he always has. He wants Bucky to feel safe with him. "Don't shut me out," is what he finally says, small and hopeful. "I can help."

When he turns his head, Bucky is facing him, a mug of soup in both hands. There are dark circles under his eyes, mouth bitten red. He looks frayed. "Steve," he says, voice rough. "You do help. Just knowing you're back here, that you're safe and alive and happy... it _does_ help."

Bucky crosses the room and perches on the edge of the couch, setting the soup down on the coffee table between them. "I'm trying to protect you. I don't want you to see-"

"If it's hurting you," Steve says, old vocal cords hoarse. "Then I want to help."

Bucky gives him a half smile, eyes distant. "When I'm out there," he almost whispers. "I think of you back here, with Buster. I think of you sitting in your armchair with your tea and your glasses perched on your nose. The way your brow still does that furrow thing right there," he reaches over and gently presses his metal thumb to the center of Steve's forehead. His thumb lingers there for a moment and then Bucky lets it fall with a deep sigh. 

Steve realizes that he's holding his breath without even knowing why. His heart thuds, loud in his ears. "Buck, " he says and swallows when it comes out rough and dry.

Bucky meets his gaze. "When I come home now, I come home to you," he says. His voice is matter-of-fact, like this is a fundamental truth. "I never thought I’d get to see you get old, even after you got the serum. Back in 2017 when you were off throwing yourself into every fight you could find, I was sure it was only a matter of time until they brought you back to me in a body bag. I couldn't let myself..." Bucky cuts himself off abruptly and squeezes his eyes shut.

Steve reaches out and lays his gnarled fingers on top of Bucky's clenched ones. 

Bucky's jaw works and then he opens his eyes, lips quirking up as their gazes meet. His expression is fond and familiar. "You help," he says.

"Do you wish I _wasn't_ old?" Steve asks, almost surprised when the words come out. It's a vulnerability he's barely voiced to himself. 

Bucky doesn't rush his answer. He cocks his head and his stare goes out the window, to where a late summer rain is drizzling down the glass. "I wish I could've seen you get there," he says, slow and pondering. "I feel like I took a shortcut, getting to you this way. Peggy must've had her work cut out for her."

Steve laughs wetly. "Yeah. I was a mess."

Now it's Bucky’s turn to squeeze his fingers. "I like you, pal," he says and he sounds so honest that it stings. 

All of Steve’s rough edges and his mistakes: Bucky has cataloged them all and he still _likes_ him. Steve knows they have a bond that goes back decades, something hard won and tenacious that can never be broken. But, Bucky actually liking him after all that time? Enjoying his company? It makes something in Steve’s chest flutter. 

Bucky grins like he can see what those words do to Steve. "You're still Steve and it takes more than a few wrinkles to change that. But, I like the ways you're different. You were always too big for me. Before. Even when you were just a little guy. I was always chasing after you. You weren't," he hesitates. It's intimate to see him ponder like this, digging through his own insides so he can be as honest as possible. "You weren't home. You were, like you said once, a forest fire. I always had to make my own home and wait for you to come around."

There is a sensation of shifting, an entire continent, maybe. Steve feels like he's on the precipice of something large, something that could swallow him whole if only he let it. "Bucky," he starts, not even knowing how he plans to finish.

There's a knock on the door and Steve springs back, unsure of when he leaned forward. His cheeks get hot and he looks down at his lap as Bucky gets up.

"Oh, hey, Steve. Am I interrupting?" Sam asks, leaning against the doorway as Bucky opens it. He's holding a greasy cardboard box in both hands. "I ordered pizza.”

Buster lets out a yowl and Bucky laughs. "I think that's a yes to the pizza."

They end up crammed together on the low couch, watching _Die Hard_ and eating the meat lovers pizza that Sam had ordered. Buster begs for scraps of meat and Bucky and Sam each put away two beers. Steve drinks tea and finds himself watching Bucky, more than the movie itself.

He leaves after it ends, while Sam and Bucky are debating whether to watch _Die Hard 2_ or to skip to _Die Hard 4_.

Bucky walks him to the door. "I'll come by tomorrow night," he says. "There's that documentary on whales we didn't finish watching."

"Sounds good." Steve picks up Buster and strokes the cat's soft fur. "If you're seeing someone," he says, "you should bring them too. I promise I won't scare them too bad."

Bucky's smile goes strangely tight, teeth showing just a little too much. "Alright, Steve."

Steve frowns. Had he just broken up with someone? "You'll find the right person, Buck," he offers. "Anyone would be lucky to have you."

Bucky softens a little, forced grin melting into just one lip tugging up. "Thanks, Steve. See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow."

Steve walks back to his home in the gathering dusk, Buster flitting around his ankles. His back is hurting a little, from sitting awkwardly on the low couch, so he takes it slow. It's quiet, just the crickets chirping and the river flowing by, the earlier rain already gone away.

His mind plays back Bucky's face, next to him on the couch, when he said _I come home to you_. He pauses by the memorials, as he often does, at the young oaks slowly growing taller over the stones. 

The words reverberate between his ears and he sits down on the bench, letting the cool night breeze clear his head. 

_When I come home now, I come home to you_.

For Thanksgiving that year, Steve puts together a dinner for everyone at the compound who doesn’t have families to go home to for the day. It ends up being Bucky and Wanda and a handful of base personnel all crammed around the dining table in Steve’s little house. 

The football game is on the television and Steve has done the smart thing and ordered a whole Thanksgiving Day spread to be delivered that morning. There’s turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and cornbread and more pies than any of them could ever eat. Wanda helps him heat up the packages in the oven while Bucky and the others sit out in the living room with bottles of beer strewn across the coffee table. 

“You seem happier now,” Wanda tells him, leaning against his counter with a glass of wine. She is getting older, shedding those last remnants of the teenager Steve had met all those years ago. “Peaceful.”

Steve gazes out at the living room, at Bucky laughing with his head thrown back. When he turns back around, Wanda is watching him with her quiet, serious gaze. 

“I have always wondered,” she says quietly, “how deep the bond between the two of you is. Even before, it was like a river that couldn’t be stopped. I could feel it, the second I saw you two together.”

“And now?” Steve asks, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He’s not sure if he wants to know the answer. 

She hums under her breath and her eyes flare red so fast he almost misses it. “It’s like the ocean,” she says. Buster twines around her ankles and she reaches down, brings him up to hold against her chest. “It is like two ships that are finally going in the same direction.”

It’s a pretty metaphor. Steve smiles. “He’s my best friend,” he says. His mind replays those words from a couple months back again.

_When I come home now, I come home to you. _

Since that evening, Steve has felt like there is something different between them, ice scraped away to reveal new growth. Bucky smiles at him, easy and joyful, and Steve feels the same happiness in his own chest at how lucky they are to still have their friendship after all this time.

Wanda rests her chin on Buster’s head. “You know,” she says, “he hasn’t dated anyone since September.” 

Is that right? Steve frowns and taps a finger to his lips. “He went to the Fourth of July picnic with Jacob,” he says slowly.“Did something happen with him?” He has vague memories of a blond technician from Chicago that sat on the picnic blanket with Bucky, leaning in and whispering into his ear as the fireworks went off over the river. 

Wanda quirks an eyebrow at him. “I think Bucky just realized they weren’t right for each other.”

“He didn’t say anything,” Steve says slowly. It almost hurts a little that Bucky neglected to mention it to him. “I’ll have to ask him about it. Was there anyone after that?”

“No.” Wanda puts Buster back down and sits at the table. “He spends all his evenings with you.”

A swell of pleasure bubbles up inside Steve’s gut but then he shakes his head. Bucky should be dating, living his life, seeing the world, finding his great love.

The Thanksgiving table is perfect. There are candles and a golden turkey and huge platters of food. Wanda gathered fall leaves and tied them in bundles as decoration. Steve observes Bucky that night, over the teeming plates of food, as he laughs and talks. 

His hair is getting long again, after he cut it in June, brushing around his neck. He’s wearing short sleeves and his dark metal arm flashes in the light from the candles, the streaks of gold shining brilliantly. 

Near the end of the meal, Bucky raises his wine glass and smiles directly at Steve. “To good food,” he says, “to good friends and to the best friend I could ever ask for.” 

He smiles as Steve’s glass touches his, beautiful and content. Steve smiles back, dragged along as always by the sheer magnetism and warmth of him. 

Bucky will find someone, Steve decides as he drinks his wine and then excuses himself to bring out dessert. How could anyone not be in love with Bucky?

The first snow comes early that year and there’s fresh powder all along the ground when Steve is called before congress to testify on the role of the Avengers in undoing Thanos’s snap. It’s one week before D.C. will clear out for the holidays and Steve is ordered to appear on a dreary Wednesday. 

“It’s a UD congressman trying to score some political points with his base before the primaries start,” Hill says in their prep meeting. “His district is one of the more radical. Just answer their questions and you’ll be home well before dinner.”

Bucky is on a mission with Sam down in Australia but he flies back early to drive Steve into the Capitol. 

“Couldn't let you go in alone,” he says as waits in the living room early Wednesday morning, sun barely turning the sky pink. 

Steve comes out of his bedroom in his one nice black suit and Bucky blinks a little. 

“You look sharp,” he says after a moment and smiles, big and bright. “You look like you're running for president. Or going to your great-grandchild’s graduation.”

Steve rolls his eyes, tugging at his suit coat. When Buster meows at his feet, he shakes his head at the cat. “I can't get white hair on my suit,” he explains and Buster huffs, flouncing off to flop onto the couch. 

Bucky carries his briefcase to the car. 

“You don't have to do this,” Steve repeats for at least the tenth time as Bucky pulls his Jeep onto the highway, heading toward the Capitol. Steve’s testifying at two p.m. so they have plenty of time. 

Bucky has his hands carefully at ten and two on the wheel, even though the road isn't busy yet. “I know I don't have to,” he says. “But we’re a team, you and me. I'm not gonna stop having your back just because you're tussling with congressmen now and not Willy Sommers down the block.”

Steve leans back in his seat and snorts. “I forgot about him,” he admits. With the way his life has skipped and wrapped around on itself, that had to have been over a hundred years ago. He shakes his head, puts his arm up on the window edge so the sunlight seeps into his coat and warms him all the way through. “How'd I ever manage to get you to stick around, huh?”

Bucky is quiet for a long moment and when Steve turns from the window to look, Bucky is gazing at him sideways, a half smile on his face. “Just lucky, I guess,” he says and the words are so fond that Steve’s pulse kicks up underneath the warmth.

“I got damn lucky then,” he says eventually, when Bucky’s turned back to the road. He has the sudden urge to reach over and hold Bucky’s hand, to feel the proof that they are _together_ after all this time. “Thank you.” His lungs feel like they’re glowing in his chest, filling up his ribs with warmth.

At the Capitol, Steve and Bucky meet with the lawyers that Maria selected and wait in a small ready room off the main chamber to be called. There were protesters on the steps outside and Bucky has been quiet since they drove by them, face dark and clouded. 

“Don’t…” Bucky hesitates when they’re about ready to call Steve out. He laughs softly and then shakes his head. “I was about to tell you not to pick a fight - but I think that would be as useless now as it was a hundred years ago.”

“Probably,” Steve agrees. He plucks at his ring with the opposite hand, twisting it back and forth. His soft, wrinkled skin pulls with the moment, loose and aged like old paper. “Sometimes I wonder how much fight I got left in me,” he says and he means it as a joke, but it comes out strangely vulnerable and he has to look down so Bucky doesn’t see how true it is.

It's the first time he's been back in D.C. since the President declared martial law and that failure still rankles at him.

An aide sticks his head in the door. “They’re ready for you,” he says and Steve starts to walk forward.

Bucky snags his sleeve right before he goes through the doorway. “You’ll always have enough fight,” he tells Steve, a little fiercely. “Always.”

It goes about how Steve expected. A few of the congressmen are outright antagonistic, but most are more subtle in their approach. They needle him about the lack of oversight in those final weeks, about how they didn’t poll the world before they undid the Snap.

“Knowing what you know now, Commander Rogers,” one of them asks toward the end, “would you still follow the same course of action?”

Steve looks down at the microphone and squeezes his hands together. Even, all these years later, he can still remember the heavy emptiness that pervaded every bone of his body every single moment that Bucky and Sam and Wanda and all the others were gone.

“I would,” he says. “It’s not even a question. That moment when,” he has to stop and clear his throat from the emotion building. “That moment when I knew they were back, really back, I can’t describe the elation… the sheer joy.

“I know that things are hard, that bringing everyone back has caused additional problems and some people are still angry about the changes it has brought. But, we’re together. We’ve gotten a second chance to do the world right, to prove Thanos wrong. And, I hope, we as a world, take that opportunity.”

When the testimony is over, Bucky is waiting for him in the hallway. He wraps Steve in a hug, right there in the hallway with the congressional aides and reporters flowing around them. “You did great,” he says.

Steve buries his face in his shoulder and clings right back, slotting himself into place. The sensation fills up his lungs, his heart, his old bones. _I come home to you too,_ he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all the lovely comments! A couple people have asked about my thoughts on how I chose this political route and I talked a little a bit about it in the comments of chapter three [here,](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/259712240) if anyone else is interested! There was a lot of exposition that didn't make it into the drafts! 
> 
> Next chapter (2027) will be up tomorrow, along with a bonus chapter (The Grand Canyon Interlude).


	6. 2027

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2027, Steve comes to some realizations.

### 2027

Steve likes to do the crossword at least once a week. He and Peggy used to do it together on Sunday evenings, sitting in their front parlor. Peggy would tuck her feet under his thigh and they’d race to see who could get it done first. 

Now, he does it in the front room, near the window where he can see the compound, and Buster stretches over the back of his chair, tail twitching faintly. 

Bucky comes over if he’s on base, turns on baseball, yells at the TV, and scratches Buster’s neck while Steve works quietly at the crossword.

Steve loves these evenings with Bucky relaxed and warm next to him, comfortable in each other’s spaces in a way that Steve has only been with two people across all of the universes. 

This winter is a cold one, snow storms coming fast and heavy through the first part of January and Bucky is over several times a week, making the freezing trek from active duty dorms. Apparently the UD don't like the snow either and the attacks taper off for the first time in months, only maybe one every two weeks. 

Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped Jeremy Deville - his podcasts and blogposts and YouTube videos are more unhinged than ever. His followers and views keep increasing, even as public sentiment seems to be moving on. Steve’s testimony enraged him and it seems like he spends half his time railing specifically against Steve as the ex-Captain America and traitor to everyone who Remained, how he is leading the charge to stop the UD from taking back what is theirs. Bucky hates it and spends hours ranting about each and every new post.

When he’s not running around with Sam or leaving angry comments on YouTube, Bucky lounges around Steve’s place like he belongs there. He walks around in his socks and does his laundry with Steve’s machines once a week, instead of sending it to the compound’s laundry department. 

One Sunday, in February, when a fresh snow storm has left the whole world bright and clean, Bucky arrives from a short mission to Boston, clearly exhausted but smiling when he sees Steve. He presses a kiss to Buster’s head, toes off his boots, and flops onto his armchair, socked feet propped on the footstool as he flips on the TV. 

“Glad to be home,” he says with a sigh, looking right at Steve.

Steve brings out tea for him in his favorite mug and settles himself on his chair and takes out his crossword, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. Buster peels himself away from Bucky and stretches out across the back of Steve’s chair. There’s a nip in the air but the furnace makes the room pleasantly warm and Steve pushes up the arms on his gray sweater. When he looks up from filling in eight down, the late afternoon sunlight, dappled a little from lingering snow clouds, is spilling across Bucky, making his skin soft and almost gold. Something deep in Steve’s chest hums with a resonance. He's beautiful. 

He lets himself watch Bucky from over the top of his glasses as he stares at the TV: the way his hands tap his knees and the picture flickers across his eyes. His dark hair is a little sweaty, sticking to the back of his neck where it's pulled back in a bun. Bucky makes a face at something on the TV and that warm spot in his chest glows again, blooming next to where Peggy has always been.

_When I come home now, I come home to you. _

The feeling swells and grows until he can feel it all through his ribs, pulsing to the beat of his heart, and suddenly, at long last, Steve knows what this feeling is. 

It’s love. 

Steve’s old lungs seize a little. Has this always been there, he wonders. He’s loved Bucky his whole life, loved him in big and small ways, but in the past months, it has felt different, expanding into something that is both ancient and fresh. 

This is different than the bright spot he’s always had for Peggy. This is steady and wide, the feeling of standing on a giant cliff and watching the ocean billow below him. Bucky is the port at the end of the storm - he always has been. Maybe the extent of that was obscured before, darkened by how he had been ripped away from Peggy. She had always loomed so large: the love of his life, the missing piece, the lost dream. She had been a damn near mythic thing that cast everything else in shadow. Now, after all of it, she has settled to something well-loved and familiar. She is the love of his life. But, now, he can see how big his own heart is: how it can fill up to the brim two times over and one is not less, just two sides of the same coin. 

Steve puts down his pen and lets the feeling wash over him, moving like a bright light through his soul. His pulse settles and his breath evens. 

He’s in love with Bucky. 

It’s not scary, like maybe it would’ve been sixty years ago. Instead, it comforts him. This is Bucky and loving him has been an integral part of his soul since his childhood. This is a new flavor, something new and special. 

He smiles, though Bucky isn’t looking at him. Peggy would be so proud of him, he thinks, getting in touch with his emotions like this. She probably knew all along, he thinks, or at least guessed at the possibility. She was always smarter than him. Her heart had always been big enough. 

“What is it?” Bucky’s turned to look at him, gaze curious. A long strand has fallen from his bun, laying across his shoulder and Steve wants to push it back, tuck it behind his ear. 

“Nothing,” Steve says as his heart glows. Buster jumps in his lap and Steve strokes his neck. There's a little tremor in his gnarled fingers, the only outward sign. He smiles. “You should stay for dinner,” he says. “I have some tuna casserole in the oven. That is… if you don’t have a date.”

He waits for the answer, feeling young and giddy like he did the first time Peggy touched his face. He remembers, in a whole different timeline, his own face, except less jaded and less weary, looking back at him.

_Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older. _

Bucky cocks his head at him. “No date,” he replies. “I’d love some tuna casserole, old man.”

Steve gets up and goes to the kitchen. He gets down plates and cups and takes a moment to steady himself against the counter. All of this, he thinks, looking at the home he has put together. How had he done all of this and not realized he was in love?

He wouldn't have been able to do this, seventy years ago. He wouldn't have been able to build a home like this, to make a safe place, to love Bucky like he deserves to be loved.

Now, he can.

And, Steve Rogers vows to himself like he once vowed to always stand up, he will, for as long as he is able to.

“I talked to Sam,” Bucky says one evening in early March, sitting down on his preferred arm chair and stretching his feet out onto its matching footrest. When Buster leaps up beside him, he barely seems to notice. “I’m coming with you to Brussels this time.”

Steve is carrying a tray with mugs of tea and small things of cream and sugar from the kitchen. He cocks an eyebrow as he sets it down on the side table and sits down in the other arm chair. His sweater bags loosely around him and he frowns. He’s been losing weight recently, he’s noticed. Even a year ago, he’d felt solid and fit, despite the creaky signs of age. Now, he’s starting to feel frail in a way he hasn’t since 1940. “Any particular reason?” 

Bucky flicks on the TV with the remote and doesn’t look at Steve. He flips through the channels, idly petting Buster with the other hand. The tea grows cold in front of him. “A government building got blown up in London,” he says. “It’s better to travel in pairs.”

“That’s a good reason you’re needed here, with the team, not following me around to a bunch of boring meetings.”

“It’ll be a good break then,” Bucky says, pausing briefly on a basketball game before forging on. Buster lifts his head and blinks at him before settling back down. “I can catch up on my reading.”

Steve squints at him: the way there are the faintest creases around the corners of his eyes and the strands of silver at the edges of his beard. Age looks good on Bucky, making him elegant and distinguished. “What is it?”

Bucky gives up on the TV, turns it off and tosses the remote onto the coffee table in front of him, making Buster abandon his side to slink over to Steve’s lap. “Because there is credible threat analysis,” he says, words clipped, “that a militant UD cell with direct links to Deville is planning on assassinating you during that little speech you’re giving on the assembly floor.”

The ring pulses and Steve takes a deep breath. Buster’s claws flex against his khaki pants as Steve turns the ring around and around his finger. He can’t die with the ring on his finger. He’s known that from the second he stepped from the other timeline to this one. That’s more important than his own life, then this burgeoning feeling in his chest for Bucky. It has to be.

He swallows. “I’m pretty tough to kill,” he says at last.

Bucky frowns at him. “They've been burning pictures of you.” He says it to the thick rug, staring down between his folded hands like he can't handle looking Steve in the face. “Ever since you testified before congress and those YouTube videos. Deville is completely fixated on you. When we’re out doing our press conferences or the community relations stuff, the UD guys have started bringing pictures of you and burning them. Deville has declared you public enemy number one.”

It makes sense. Tony is dead. Nat is dead. Thor is off-world. Clint’s always been in the shadows. Bruce is viewed more as the Hulk than a policy maker. Steve has always been the leader, especially after all the major networks ran his congressional testimony live. 

Maria had been over the moon with the whole thing when it first aired. Public opinion polls were swinging more and more in favor of discontinuing policies that unfairly targeted those who had been Returned. The economy was picking up steam, jobs were coming back, people were moving on. A majority disapproved of the violent methods of the UD and more and more prominent people were being pressured to formally denounce them. No wonder the fanatics who remained under the UD banner were feeling threatened. 

Bullies always fought the hardest when they knew they were going to lose. 

Steve stares down at his khakis and the way his wrists are wrinkled and frail in the sleeves of his sweater. He balls his hands into fists. Buster stares up at him, green eyes almost worried. “Well,” he says. “Hopefully they're good pictures.”

Bucky snorts. 

Bucky does go with him to Brussels. They take one of the quinjets and Bucky performs all the safety checks himself, manages their own flight plan, times it so they leave the compound after sunset and arrive in Brussels before sunrise. 

Buster is unhappy to be left behind, meowing pitifully as he watched Steve pack. He tried to dart out the door when they carried their bags out, but Bucky caught him and shut him back inside. Wanda would be over to fetch him as soon as she could. 

There’s a private landing pad on the main building, normally reserved for the highest of dignitaries, and Bucky lands there like he owns it. 

“Are you sure this is allowed?” Steve asks, teasing a little as Bucky locks down the quinjet in one of the few hangar spaces available. 

“Do you think the UN wants Captain America to die on their watch?” 

“Not Captain America anymore,” Steve says mildly, hoisting his duffle over his shoulder. 

Bucky grunts as he picks up a long black carry case with god knows how many guns inside. His hair is pulled back, tight so that all the bones of his face stand out sharply. “You’ll always be Captain America. Just like Sam will always be Captain America now too. Damn fools running around with a target on your back.”

The first two days of the trip are boring, like Steve had predicted. He sits in bland, gray conference rooms that overlook the old buildings of Europe and listens to the ever-growing list of concerns as the entire world struggles to find their feet again. Italy has two governments, one that was elected before the Decimation and one that was elected after and the former is claiming that the recent election was fraudulent and the UN needs to support one and… 

Steve turns toward Bucky during one of the longer, more technical debates and he’s gazing right back at Steve, steady and unwavering, like he believes Steve can fix all these problems and keep the entire world from dissolving into chaos. It almost makes Steve believe he can. 

He hears rumblings, whispers just out of his diminished ear shot from serious security personnel leaning close to Bucky, that there are protesters out in the street, waving signs with his face on the front. Out the window one day, he sees a whole crowd clustered outside the security fences. The weight of their anger exhausts him as it much as it saddens him. 

After the escalating attacks by the UD militia and Deville’s inflammatory rhetoric, fewer politicians are vocal about affiliating themselves with the Undeparted ideology - but Steve sees the way some of them eye him with barely contained fury. The hatred is still there.

On the third day, Steve is set to address the General Assembly. At Bucky’s insistence, he puts on a bulletproof vest underneath the dark conservative suit he’s wearing. The coat barely fits over it, to his annoyance.

“They say Deville is in the city,” Bucky tells him completely ignoring his complaints as they wait back in the wings. His face is hard. “Keep your eyes open.”

Steve nods and then walks out onto the stage. 

Bucky lingers out of sight for the whole speech, metal arm bared and gleaming in the yellow light of the backstage area.

“See?” Steve says once the speech is over and they’re walking down to take their armored car back to where the quinjet is waiting for them. The vest is itching under his shirt and he can't wait to take it off. “Everything is fine.”

His hand touches the car handle and the explosion takes him off his feet. Bucky is two steps behind and Steve is slammed backward into him. 

_Not Bucky_, Steve pleads and the ring pulses and purple shimmers dance before his eyes even as fire fills the air in front of him. Time pulls apart, green flickering at all the stretched edges, and Steve can see the way it slows: the way the glass arcs through the air, going half melted from the force of the explosion; the way the metal frame of the car bends and blackens, bursting out with flames and shrapnel. The air in his lungs goes hot and he thinks he cries out. All sound is muffled, like he's deep underwater.

They hit the ground together, Bucky’s metal arm going around his chest as he cushions their fall. Steve’s hands are still outstretched in front and the explosion hits the purple shimmer like it’s an impenetrable shield. The purple ripples with the impact and Steve feels the jolt in his own lungs. Time snaps back to normal speed, loud and chaotic. The explosion is still echoing, car alarms just starting their wail. People are shouting, screaming.

His arm is on fire, Steve thinks wildly as an overload of sensations sweep across him. He can feel his bones melting like acid and his skin disintegrating. He can’t hold it. He can’t. The insides of his eyelids glow purple and green, stars exploding faster and faster as the pressure in his head swells and crests like a balloon, filled to bursting. Each blood vessel in his head is roaring and he can’t hear anything outside of his own skull. He screams himself, drowning out the car alarms. _Stop. _

The pressure ends, siphoning away as fast as water going down a drain. His arm is still burning and fire is crackling from the explosion, a police siren already wailing down the street. He sucks in deep, long breaths. There are hands on both sides of his face and he focuses on the coolness of metal against his right cheek. 

“Steve!” Bucky shouts, above the ringing in his ears. “Steve. Look at me. You're okay. Breathe.”

Steve opens his eyes and Bucky is crouched over him, blocking the fire and the street. His dark hair is hanging over Steve and his blue-gray eyes are bright. There are no burns on him, no blood or bruises or even scrapes. He’s magnificent. Everything is okay. Steve protected him. 

“I’m here,” Steve rasps and lifts his right arm. His left arm is weighted like lead, a deep, never-ending burst of pain. He can’t think about it or it will consume him whole. 

“Lay still,” Bucky says. “An ambulance is coming. You'll be okay.” He’s staring at Steve’s arm, hands drifting over where the black suit jacket has burned away. His face is pinched. 

“I need,” Steve gasps. “To go back to the compound. No hospital.”

“Steve.” 

He lifts his right hand to his face. His face is stinging like the skin is sunburned but there are no burns or cuts. The only damage is his arm. It had been a sudden, involuntary surge of power and the remnants are still echoing around his bones. 

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “I want to go home. Please.”

Bucky touches his face. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

He wraps Steve’s arm in sterile bandages, back on the quinjet, after cutting away the charred suit sleeve. The quinjet flies on autopilot, speeding over the ocean toward home.

“You know what this looks like,” he says quietly as he makes a sling out of muslin, securing the burned arm to Steve’s chest. “You know I’ve seen it before when… I know there are things you aren’t telling me. That’s okay. But, you have to be careful. I can’t lose you. I can’t. Tony died, Steve.”

“I know.” Steve stares down at the arm, where he can still feel the ring pulsing against his skin. “I know.”

The doctors at the compound say Steve suffered second- and third-degree burns from the explosion. They can't explain why his left arm is the only part of him injured and Steve notices how they exchange glances over his head. 

Bucky took him straight here when they landed and Steve wasn’t able to muster the energy to protest. Bruce was called. Sam was informed. The whole compound went into lockdown against another potential attack. 

They arrested two men in Brussels before Steve even finished being examined by the compound doctors. Both of the assailants were UD militia guys with US passports and, so far, they claimed to be working alone. Scott and Hope head over to Brussels to help with the investigation. Interpol flagged Deville crossing the border into Belgium the morning of Steve’s speech and there is an alert out for him as a person of interest. 

The whole team is mobilizing. This is the first time they’ve potentially had a direct link between UD violence and Deville. They can’t afford to pass this up. Sam’s already in D.C. with Maria to strong arm the FBI into cooperating with Interpol. Bucky should be there too - but he’s refused to leave Steve from the moment of the explosion. 

Steve sits in the infirmary and sees how the burns spread from his ring finger, like poison crawling up his veins and nerves, all the way up to just past his elbow. He doesn't flinch as the nurses cut away dead, blackened skin and apply salves to the places the skin has bubbled up. They wrap his whole arm in sterile bandages and tell him to come back in the morning for it to be cleaned again. 

“The serum is still working,” Bruce tells him, quietly, when Bucky has been sent home to shower and fetch a change of clothes for Steve. “It's at about thirty percent effectiveness, compared to the baselines I have from before. It'll take longer to heal but there should only be minimal scarring. No lasting nerve damage.”

Steve flexes his fingers inside the thick wrappings and the throb of slow-healing burns shoots all the way down his spine. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Steve, the serum is going to continue to degrade.” Bruce rests his giant green hands on his knees. “I can run tests and get some timelines for you… but I think it might be down to less than 5% within a couple years. You need to be careful. You're not indestructible.”

“I know.” Except, he's never going to let Bucky be hurt if he can stop it. He shuts his eyes. God, he wants so many more years than this. He has been so lucky. There had been a moment of fear, as he had lain on his back with the pain racing up his arm, that he had felt the extent of his frailty and all the foolish choices he has made. He can't make these mistakes again.

Bruce hesitates. “You know,” he says. “When I used the stones…”

“It was from the explosion,” Steve cuts him off. “That was all.”

The side of Bruce’s mouth twists like he knows Steve is lying - but Bucky comes in then and Bruce falls back. 

“Hey, you ready?” Bucky has a thick navy sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants from Steve’s closet, along with socks and his favorite slippers. He's smiling but there's something raw and vulnerable in his eyes. “We gotta hurry. Buster is waiting right outside and he's not happy that he's not allowed inside a medical facility. I’m pretty sure he might come through the window if we take too long.”

It's embarrassing but he needs Bucky’s help to get the sweatshirt on over his head and the bulky bandages on his arm. By the time Bucky has helped him with the socks, Steve is sweaty and trembling from the pain. 

“Are you sure you shouldn't stay overnight?” Bucky asks carefully when Steve takes several long moments to catch his breath before he can even hold himself upright on the bed. His hands hover around Steve’s shoulders like he wants to prop him up.

Steve almost considers it. This is a hurt and weakness he hasn't felt in decades. His little house is less than a quarter of a mile away but it might as well be miles. “I want my own bed,” is what he finally says though. 

When he acquiesces to the wheelchair without argument, Bucky puts a hand on his forehead like he's looking for fever, eyes dark and concerned. “I’m staying with you for a few days,” he tells him, spreading a blanket across Steve’s lap, tucking it in around his thighs. He drapes another one over Steve’s shoulders. “No arguments. We can watch that History channel series you've been going on about.”

Steve nods and catches Bucky’s hand as he fusses with the sling they gave him. He stares for a moment at the creased, spotted skin of his own hand next to Bucky’s smooth, even flesh. His lungs catch. “I'm sorry,” he says and he doesn't even know how many things he is so desperately sorry for. 

Bucky squeezes his fingers right back and bends to kiss Steve on the forehead. It's chaste and tender and Steve closes his eyes because tears are prickling against them. Bucky is so wonderful and Steve is so lucky, just to have his friendship.

“I'm here,” Bucky says to Steve’s forehead, solemn like it's a prayer. “I'm not going anywhere. Whatever happens, Steve. You don't have to be afraid. I’ll keep you safe. I swear it.”

Buster is waiting for them at the front door, his gray spots washed out in the cold infirmary lights. He lets out a disgruntled yowl when he sees them and then leaps into Steve’s lap, sniffing around the bandages gently before curling against Steve’s stomach. He licks at Steve’s unbandaged hand, grooming aggressively like he can heal Steve with the power of his tongue.

“Is he hurting you?” Bucky asks and Steve shakes his head, finally feeling the adrenaline cool off as Buster settles on top of him. 

The night air is still nippy and Steve finds himself dozing as Bucky carefully pushes him in the wheelchair across the smooth pavement and the manicured grounds of the compound. He goes slow and steady, easing over bumps like Steve is delicate and precious. 

They're safe, they're together. For now, that's all Steve can ask for. 

Sam and Bucky spend his 109th birthday with him. He’s lived more years than that - but the year is 2027 and Steve was born in 1918, so it’s as good of an age as any to claim. 

They drink expensive scotch and sit on Steve’s porch, watching the fireworks explode over the city. Steve leans back in his chair, right hand drifting down to settle on Buster’s comforting weight, spread over his legs. 

His left arm is still in a sling. It’s healing at a snail’s pace, shiny, red burn scars crawl up and down his arm like spreading vines from his hand. It aches and Steve spends whole nights pacing his bedroom in his slippers when it throbs too much to sleep. Buster stays up with him those nights, either following his pacing or watching Steve from the bed. He’s gotten protective of Steve since Brussels, staying plastered against him and giving the hairy eyeball to most visitors. 

Bucky doesn't know about the sleepless nights. He only knows that the wound is slow to heal and that worries him enough. Steve has accepted that mortal frailty is just another part of his life now. It is to be borne. He doesn't have to worry Bucky any more than he already is. 

Two weeks after the Brussels attack, Deville claims responsibility and he’s been a fugitive since, first hiding out in France and then heading down to Egypt before he drops off the radar. Some say he crossed back into the US and others say he’s down in South America. No matter where he is, he’s still posting online. If anything, Steve’s survival made him angrier and Steve is regularly featured in the videos with a bullseye drawn across his face. 

Tonight though, Steve is doing his best to think of none of that. It is his birthday, after all.

“Any words of wisdom, Steve?” Sam asks. His feet are up on the railing and he’s watching Steve with warm eyes. He’s graying a tiny bit at the temples now, a fine smattering of salt right at the edges. 

A cool breeze is cutting through the humidity of the day and Steve can hear the buzz of crickets from the river. “Follow your heart,” he says at last, grinning when Sam groans and tosses a piece of popcorn at his head. 

“Old age makes you cheesy,” Sam declares. “Next you’re gonna say that all you need is love.”

Steve laughs and his eyes flick to Bucky, pulling to a halt when their gazes meet.

Bucky is half in the light spilling from the open door, bright eyes fixed on Steve. His arms are folded over his chest and there’s a smile on his face, tugging his face into something soft and gentle. He stands in the doorway to the home that Steve has made and he is gentle and warm. He is loved.

The magic, Steve thinks, of being together like this after all these years. 

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he says, playing up the old man rasp in his voice to Sam’s laughter. His eyes don’t leave Bucky’s and he feels his insides go soft as Bucky lifts his glass to him in a toast. 

That’s the thing about love, Steve decides. Love like this doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t break him in two like missing Peggy did. This isn’t the bitter taste of regret; this is the sweet taste of something wholly true. He may never be with Bucky on this earth like he was with Peggy, but that’s okay. 

Love is warm and love is kind. It’s unselfish and pure and unfailing. Love is a many-splendored thing and Steve is the lucky one to feel it for two such amazing people.

All you need is love, indeed. 

Bleecker Street is quiet when Steve arrives on a late summer day in Manhattan. He uses the key Wong gave him after the Decimation and waits at the foot of the stairs for Stephen Strange to come to him. 

“Commander Rogers,” Strange says from somewhere in the shadows. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Steve pulls the ring off his finger, holds it to a shaft of sunlight coming from the windows high up. The scars on his hand are slowly fading, turning to thick pale pink ridges that feel tight and ache only when it rains. “You made me this,” he says. “In another time.”

Strange plucks the slim bit of gold from Steve’s grasp, lets it float in the air between his fingers. For a second, it is only a dull gold ring and then, the stones within flare like stars, brilliant and bright. A rainbow spills from inside the gold like stained glass. 

Steve watches as Strange’s eyes fix on the single pinpoint of green among the other colors. “They aren’t mature,” he says quietly. “We thought it would take ten years or so - but it was all hypothetical. They respond to the resonance of the universe so they were mostly unformed when I came back. They need to be near each other, in order to reach full maturity.”

“What will you do with them?” Strange asks. “When they are ready.”

Steve studies him. He doesn’t know the Strange of this timeline well. Stephen, the man in the other timeline, had been brusque and demanding but was not someone who’d be tempted by the power of the stones. He thinks that will not change - but there is always a risk. “The Time Stone belongs in the Sanctum Sanctorum. Some of the others will have places. Others will be hidden.”

Strange hands him back the ring and the light diminishes. “If people realize that you have this…”

Steve nods as he returns the ordinary gold band to his ring finger. “You’re the only person I’ve told.” He hesitates. “I want to stay here. I don’t want to hide.”

“You’re asking for my help.” 

“You’re sworn to protect the stones. I’m asking you to come to their aid. Not mine.” Steve tucks his hands into his sweater. “I’m old. I’ve lived a long life. My mission is to keep them protected long enough that they’re able to re-stabilize this reality. It has been since I came here.” He looks down. “That is more important than me - than any of us. The ring is protected with a binding spell… if I die before passing the ring on to someone else, the ring will scatter the stones throughout the universe, regardless of whether they have fully matured. That isn’t ideal. My plan is to pass the ring on to you before that happens.”

Strange folds his arms at his waist, one eyebrow lifting. “What about you? There are only a few binding spells that I know of and none end well for the owner when broken, even by choice.”

Steve hesitates, balls his hands into fists. “I’ll only pass it on as a very last resort. They put in as many safeguards as possible. But, yes: the process of transferring ownership of the bindings will probably kill me.” Probably is optimistic. The Strange of the other timeline had said it was “highly likely.”

Strange sucks in a quiet breath through his teeth but he meets Steve’s eyes steadily. He nods, face somber. “I will watch. If there is trouble, I will come.”

“Thank you.”

Steve hits the glass doors of the infirmary at a run, heedless of how all his joints ache with the exertion. 

Sam is sitting on a bench right in the lobby, head leaning back against the wall, and he jerks upright when Steve gets close. “Hey, no.” He stands up, both hands outstretched. “You can’t go in there, Steve. You need to let them work.”

“He’s in there?” Steve pushes against Sam’s hands, straining around him toward where he can see white coats gathered in a knot in a room at the end of the hallway. “Sam, I need to be there.”

“No. You don’t.” Sam tightens his grip. “Steve. You can’t help him in there. You need to sit here next to me, okay? Did you run all the way here, man? C’mon.” He guides Steve back to the low couch by the elbow, kneels in front of him. “Sit down. Breathe for me.”

Steve presses a hand against his own chest. His heart is hammering beneath his sweater and he can hear the high wheeze in his throat. “I’m okay,” he says and Sam laughs. 

“Yeah, tell that to my Aunt Diane. Even she’d be able to see through your bullshit.” Sam moves up to sit beside him, places a hand on his knee. “He’ll be fine, Steve. He was already being an annoying pain in the ass halfway back here.”

“What happened?”

Sam winces. “There was more of the UD militia than we thought. He got pinned and I… I was too far away. It’s all my fault, Steve. All of this. It's been… I’m so sorry.”

“No. No.” Steve shakes his head, leaning into Sam’s shoulder. “Definitely not your fault, Sam. You're doing the right thing. It’s mine. I should’ve been there. I should be watching his back.” He hates how his voice sounds thin and frail over the words, wobbling with age where before it would’ve resonated.

“Commander Rogers?” A doctor is standing at the end of the hall. “We’ve finished stitching him up and he’s asking for you.”

Bucky is pale but smiling when Steve comes into the medical room. He's sitting on the exam bed, shirt off and his hair completely fallen out of his bun. In the metal tray next to the bed, a discarded field dressing is still crumpled, blood soaked into the layers. Bucky’s flesh arm is in a sling and dressing is packed against his left side. “Hey, old man,” he says and his eyes are soft. “Miss me?”

Steve lays his wrinkled hand on Bucky’s face. “You can’t do this to me, pal,” he says. “Gonna give me heart failure.”

That evening, he takes Bucky home. Someone needs to be with him, wake him up every three hours to check his concussion and, of course, Steve will be the one to do that. 

Steve gets Bucky set up in his bedroom. He fusses with blankets and cups of tea, brings in books from his shelves and lines them up carefully so Bucky won’t have to strain himself at all to reach them. 

Buster seems to sense something is wrong and fairly glues himself to Bucky’s side, eyes wide and watchful as Steve shuffles around the room. He snuffles at Bucky’s face, swiping rough licks over Bucky’s cheeks before curling onto his lap. 

When the room is arranged to his liking, Steve leaves Buster with Bucky while he gets dinner ready. He can’t deal with the oven so he heats up two cans of tomato soup and throws together two grilled cheese sandwiches. After they’re done, he carries everything into the bedroom on a tray and drags a chair in from the dining room so they can eat their dinner together.

Steve has changed into his sweats and his night robe, his slippers on his feet, and he still can’t stop the shivers cutting through his whole body every few minutes, making the spoon rattle against the side of his bowl. Steve could’ve lost him again. 

Bucky finishes his soup and sighs, face pinched and narrowed from the lingering pain. He is gently petting Buster, but his movements aren't as fluid as normal, stiff and small like his whole body is aching. 

The terror that has soured inside Steve’s stomach since the call came over the comms surges again. Tears prick his eyes and he exhales heavily to dry them, standing to clear Bucky’s dinner tray. 

“You didn’t eat much,” Bucky notes as Steve stacks the bowls and plates.

“Not hungry. I can always get something later.” Steve forces a smile. 

Bucky catches his arm. “Steve,” he says. “I’m okay.”

It’s too much. Steve collapses back down in the chair, shoving the tray with the dirty dishes onto the bedside table, heedless of how it knocks into the lamp. Buster startles upright, green eyes fixed on Steve, but he doesn't leave Bucky’s side. 

Steve’s hands are shaking too hard and he squeezes them together, furious suddenly at the delicate, creased skin and the age spots and the way the joints stick and the muscles tremble, at the softness in his flesh when before he’d been so sturdy. This is a rage he hasn’t felt in decades. His life with Peggy cooled so much of that bubbling resentment and self-loathing he lived with since the ice and he thought himself matured to a more serene place, above the hot-headed furor of his youth. 

He had rescued Bucky. He’d seen Tony been born. He’d watched his younger self get pulled from the ice. They had led a softer, gentler life, thanks to Steve. There hadn’t been terrorism and explosions at every step. Why can’t his Bucky have that as well? It feels like pressing on an old bruise, this ache that his Bucky still has to fight, to put his very life on the line, while Steve watches from the sidelines.

Now, the familiar pulse is behind his eyes, drying out his mouth as his heart thuds. “I should’ve been there,” he says and Bucky watches him quietly. “I should’ve... god. I’m useless. I can’t do anything.” He stops when his voice clogs with wetness.

When Peggy was dying of Alzheimer’s, he felt this same helpless agony. He held her hand and watched as she faded into someone who didn’t recognize him. Near the end, even he couldn’t comfort her. His heart broke, raging at a disease that couldn’t be stopped. 

This rage is different: directed inward because the only person to blame is himself. He took himself out of the equation. He is the one who grew old and left Bucky to save the world alone. He now lives in a slow and tottering body while his friends carry the burden of the future. He’d been able to shield all of them and now he is nothing more than a bystander. Deville is right when he calls Steve old and useless. 

He'd learned to build a home, he'd learned to love. He'd learned to be peaceful and comforting - and yet, he still can't keep Bucky completely safe.

Bucky takes his hands, cradles the soft and gnarled flesh gently. “I’m not gonna say I don’t miss you out there, pal. Because I do. But this is the timeline we got. These are the cards. Can’t waste it being angry at stuff we can’t fix.”

Steve shakes his head. “Not that easy, Buck.”

“Yes, it is, old man.” Bucky smiles at him, that sunny, resilient thing that Steve will never get tired of watching. “Now, where are you gonna sleep, huh? I’m in your bed.”

“On the couch,” Steve tells him. “I already put out the extra blanket and pillow.”

“No way.”

Steve blinks at him. 

“You are almost two hundred years old, buddy. I’m not putting a man that old on the couch.”

“I thought I’d always be younger than you,” Steve teases. 

“Not this time, pal.” Bucky wiggles himself to the left. “There’s plenty of room in this bed for the both of us.”

His breath goes soft in his lungs, all the relief and anxiety and love filling him up again. “Buck,” he says. 

“C’mon now. We used to do this when we were kids. Can’t be much different now.” He smiles at Steve, all charm and sweetness. 

Steve can’t say no. “You know,” he says as he toes off his slippers and drapes his robe over the foot of the bed. “I haven’t done this in a good long while.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks. He’s on his left side with his injured arm cradled against his chest. “Peggy made you sleep in the office?”

Buster scoots toward the end of the mattress, sprawling out over Steve’s robe, like he knows what's going to happen. His tail flicks and his green eyes shine in the dim lamplight. 

Steve sits down on the bed, lowers himself back into the pillows. Even after pulling the blankets up, he can see the narrowness of his old, wrinkled body next to the firm, muscle of Bucky’s. “I cared for her at home as long as I could,” he says quietly. “But, then. She was too far gone and I knew I had to do right by her, let professionals make sure she would get what she needed to keep her comfortable.” He draws in a breath and it’s like all his grief for her and all his terror for Bucky is intermingled in his chest. His love for them twists and turns and fills up his heart, layered with all the horror of the world. 

“I was there when she died. She’d been at hospice for about three months. She hadn’t known my name for almost a year. I thought it would be easier, knowing it was coming. And in some ways, it was. But, it was also worse.”

Bucky makes a soft noise and then his arms go around Steve, pulls him close, and Steve is engulfed by him, like he never got the serum at all and the war didn’t happen. He closes his eyes and rests against Bucky’s chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art in this chapter by Psifiend!


	7. The Grand Canyon Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve travels somewhere new.

###  The Grand Canyon Interlude

It's a slow evening in late September, a low mist rising up off the river and thickening the air to something heavy and sweet. Bucky is on Steve's couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table and a plate that used to hold Chinese takeout is on the cushions next to him. 

Buster is stretched out by the window, basking in the last of the sun.

Steve is in his armchair, little lap desk pulled over so he can sketch. He's drawing Bucky, the fall of hair around his ears, the way the metal of his arm gleams as it lies across his T-shirt-covered stomach, the tiniest suggestion of sweat below his hairline, the way the evening sun falls in a thick line across his neck and shoulder. Steve used to draw him like this when they were kids, sitting in a small apartment in Brooklyn. Steve looks down at the sweep of the jawline on his page and thinks that a part of his heart has always lived with Bucky. He gave it to him so early that he didn’t even realize it was gone until over a century later. Loving Bucky is like an old nursery rhyme, ingrained into his marrow so that returning to it feels like coming home. 

Bucky's watching some sort of nature documentary with the dull gaze of someone who isn't all of the way focused. The skin beneath his eyes is dark and his lip is bitten raw. He's pushing himself too hard, Steve thinks. He's picking up too many burdens and running himself too thin.

The head injury had only kept him grounded for two weeks. Not enough time, on Steve’s opinion. The physical injuries may have healed but Bucky had been grinding himself to the bone for months. 

Steve curves his fingers a little harder around the pencil, fighting back against the constant, little tremor in them that he’s noticed lately. He can't carry the weight of all their troubles like he used to. He can only sit next to Bucky in the evenings, feed him and make him laugh and hope that's enough. It burns at him.

"I've always wanted to go there," Bucky says and Steve looks at the screen. A wide vista of the Grand Canyon fills it up, camera panning over orange rock and the blue of a river. 

"I've never been either," Steve says. Over the canyon, a bird soars across the blue sky, swooping over the vast landscape. Steve traces the movement with his eyes. How many lifetimes would it take to see all the wonders of the world?

"We should go." Bucky says it softly and when Steve turns to him, Bucky isn't looking at the TV. Instead, his gaze is fixed on Steve, filled to the brim with something soft and deep. Hope? He looks impossibly young. 

Steve folds his hands neatly on top of his paper as his old heart quickens. All of the wonders of the world, he thinks, and he'd rather spend all the rest of his lifetime caught in that gaze. He smiles. "We should," he says. 

A week later, Bucky shows up with a duffel bag. "I told Sam and Maria we're taking the quinjet for a few days. Wanda is going to watch Buster. Pack your things."

Steve puts his bookmark between the pages of his book. "Where are we going?"

"The Grand Canyon, old man. Keep up."

### 

They land the quinjet at a small airfield a few miles from the Grand Canyon and a sleek black car is waiting for them on the tarmac. Two tall glasses of champagne are already poured for them in the plush leather back seat and Bucky flushes a bit.

"I got Pepper's help to pull this all together," he tells Steve, holding the champagne glass delicately between his metal fingers as their driver pulls away from the airfield. "Apparently reservations at the lodges are hard to come by - but she pulled some strings."

The desert stretches around them, a dark gold in the late afternoon sun, only broken up by the silhouettes of shrubby trees. Steve leans toward the window and thinks he's never seen a sky quite that big. The car takes them straight to a large wooden lodge sitting on the very edge of the canyon. Their driver drops them off. 

"I'll see your bags get to your room," he says politely.

Steve's barely listening. Beyond the green lawn of the hotel, he can see the breadth of the canyon expanding into the distance. He walks toward it, hears Bucky’s footsteps behind him as he follows. At the railing, he leans over the edge, staring down at the blue and red rock walls as they stretch downward in layers. Centuries are visible in the earth, millennia even. There are so many colors - Steve hadn’t realized rocks could be so vivid.

He feels, suddenly, like he did when he stood alone in the destroyed compound, with Thanos facing him across the rubble with a whole army: small and fragile. Steve inhales. Bucky's hands rest beside his on the railing. They don't say much as the sun sets behind them, turning the canyon gold and crimson.

"No matter how many years I live," Steve says quietly as the shadows begin to grow longer. "It's nothing in the span of time, is it?"

He senses more than sees Bucky flinch next to him and he drags his eyes away from the deep walls so he can face him fully. "Buck?"

"It's nothing." Bucky flashes him a quick, familiar smile. It's too bright, too easy. 

Steve doesn't call him on it, just leans over and bumps their shoulders together. 

When they go back to the lodge, the receptionist hands them room keys and directs them to the third level suites. "Enjoy your stay," she says brightly and Steve wonders if he imagines that her gaze darts between them, assessing. 

Bucky opens the door to the suite and Steve knows he didn't imagine it. The bedroom is dominated by a single, king size poster bed, full of fluffy pillows.

"One bed?" Steve asks, arching one eyebrow.

Bucky has paused in the doorway, staring back out at the little sitting room with two easy chairs and no pull out couch. His cheeks are reddening a little and he scrapes one hand across his head, gaze darting around the room, everywhere but Steve.

What is going on with him?

"Pepper said there was only one suite she could get." Bucky rubs the back of his neck. "I can sleep on the floor. I'm sorry."

Steve pauses to take in the whole room. A thick bouquet of flowers rests on one of the side tables. From Pepper, probably. Out the window, he can see a spray of stars stretching over the canyon. It's beautiful.

"We've shared a bed enough times, Buck," he says at last, ignoring how his own stomach whirls a little. In another life, maybe this would've all been on purpose. A honeymoon, maybe. They would've been giddy with possibilities. Steve would’ve been young and strong, matching Bucky’s smooth brow and steady hands. 

This is enough, he tells himself, turning to look at Bucky. This is more than enough.

He smiles, puts all of his fondness into his eyes. _My best friend_, he tells himself. “This is becoming a habit,” he says and hopes it sounds teasing instead of longing. 

### 

They stay nine days in total, a blissful stretch of days. Each one is bookended by radiant sunrises and glorious sunsets. 

Time goes syrupy, sweet and slow and golden. For a few days, it’s like the world beyond them has subsided and all that exists is this place. There is no Deville, no Undeparted. It is just them and the wonders of nature. 

They do end up sharing the bed. Sometimes, Steve wakes up before sunrise and watches Bucky breathe next to him, watches the pink light creep over his face and hair. He memorizes the places where a bit of gray is starting to sprout in the dark hair, the new wrinkles that spread out from the corner of his eyes like tree roots. Bucky is relaxed in sleep, all the stress easing away. All of it makes him more lovely and Steve thinks he could look for hours. He daydreams, as Bucky sleeps next to him, of a world where this wouldn’t be over in a few days. He imagines a world where Bucky gets to grow old with him. 

In the hazy moments before fully waking, Steve lingers in the warmth of loving Bucky. He dreams of making him dinner and soothing his nightmares. He wants to make Bucky safe and peaceful. He wants to make Bucky a world like he made the other one: not perfect but _better. _

There is a steadiness inside of Steve that hadn't been there before he'd lived decades. He may not be able to fight like he used to, but he can make Bucky a home, like he'd never been able to do before. He can create a place of peace. It's been his constant desire since he'd come back and, in the early dawn hours, Steve makes the vows anew, wiping over some of the uselessness he’s felt since Bucky was injured in the field. 

_I will be your sanctuary. I will always be there. _

Bucky goes for a run every morning and makes coffee in their little kitchen while Steve gets ready. They sit on their balcony and drink the coffee together while the sun creeps upward, warming the crisp, late autumn air. Birds swoop and dive over the canyon and little rabbits hop across the lawn. They don’t need words and the silence between them is gentle and easy. 

Then, they go on slow, meandering walks down the trails around the rim. They bring along lunches from the lodge and eat on rocks or benches or sitting cross-legged on the dusty ground. Steve will get out his sketchbook and try to capture the cliffs and boulders and the sharp shine of the river while Bucky explores little ledges and caves. 

They hike the narrow rim trails, following them down and down deeper into the canyon. Sometimes, they walk in silence and other times, they talk. They talk about Brooklyn and Wakanda: all of the good parts that they’ve shared. Bucky keeps his pace sedate, matching Steve’s slower strides without ever making him feel like he’s lagging or struggling. He reads Steve with an ease that is almost annoying, calling for stops for food or water or to admire the view when Steve is doing his best to hide the beginnings of weariness. 

“I’m getting slow in my old age,” he tells Steve, sprawling on a rock. He leans back on his elbows, languid in the late afternoon warmth. He tips his head back and the sunlight falls over his cheeks and down his neck, where the tiniest bit of sweat makes him shine. “It's not a race. It’s good to stop and smell the roses.”

Steve sits next to him and tries to keep his breath even while Bucky eyes him knowingly. 

“It’s okay, Steve,” Bucky tells him when Steve has to rest several times on their way back up. “I don’t mind. Don’t…” he trails off and bites at his thumbnail in frustration.

While Steve leans on his knees, Bucky gets out the canteen and makes Steve drink several gulps. 

“I don’t care that you’re not as strong,” he says when Steve wipes his mouth. His eyes are dark and drilling straight through Steve’s embarrassment. “You get that, right? You’re Steve. You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me.”

His fingers linger against Steve’s as he takes back the canteen and Steve’s lungs go thick with something other than exhaustion. 

Back in their suite, Steve cooks dinner, makes all of the dishes he’s good at and, when he exhausts those, makes scrambled eggs and toast. They buy cans of soup, bags of fruit, along with bread and cheese at the supermarket and make sandwiches and heat up the soup, cutting up the fruit for something healthy. 

Bucky also gets a huge bag of Cheetos and sits sideways on the chair, eating them by the fistful. “One good thing about the future,” he says, smearing his yellow-powdered hand on his pants, “is the junk food.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’ve never seen you eat that.”

Bucky laughs. “I have a whole stash under my bunk at the dorms. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and just need it.”

Nightmares: something that Steve can’t fix with a few words or a home-cooked meal. He stares at his wrinkled hands. “You could leave some at my home,” he says quietly. “For when you stay over.” He doesn’t say: _I want my home to be your home too. Let me take care of you in the way I couldn't take care of you when I was younger. _

Bucky crinkles the bag, rolls it down and tucks it next to his side. “I’ll do that,” he agrees and his tone is so gentle that Steve’s insides ache.

They could spend years here, Steve thinks, and he’d never get tired of all the wonders.

At night, they watch movies on the flat screen. Bucky lays on his stomach on the bed and Steve sits in the deep armchair. They pass a bowl of popcorn back and forth and Bucky laughs like a child at the old black and white comedies. Steve finds himself watching Bucky sometimes, rather the screen. He watches as the dark circles ease underneath Bucky’s eyes and feels his own heart swell with love. 

At the end of the first week, they decide to take a guided rafting tour of the river. The guide gives a doubtful look at Steve when he shows up. 

“We have some rapids that we go through,” he says pointedly, leaning closer to Bucky. His eyes cut to Steve over his shoulder. “Think he’s up for it?”

Bucky cuts his gaze back at Steve, like he’s waiting for Steve to blow up. 

Steve shrugs. “I’ll be fine,” he offers, talking to Bucky and not about his fitness for the rapids. 

“He’ll be fine,” Bucky repeats and Steve grins. 

By the time they’re back, the guide shakes both of their hands. “You’re welcome back anytime,” he says. “We have longer tours that go overnight - we camp about midway down.”

Bucky is nodding. “That sounds amazing.”

Steve barely has enough strength to crawl into bed that night, but it’s worth it. 

On their second to last day, they hike down to the very bottom of the canyon with sleeping bags and set up a small camp in a low clearing. They lie on their backs and watch the sunset spread across the sky and then the stars and the moon come up. 

“I’ve been up there,” Steve says quietly. “When you were… well. During the five years. I never thought, back in Brooklyn, that I’d ever be up there in space.”

“I want to go up there someday,” Bucky says back, just as quiet. They can hear the wind in the trees and the sound of water over rocks. “See the stars up close. Maybe visit a few planets. Dance with an alien.” He smiles and Steve watches the moonlight play over his face. “How’s that for the bucket list?”

Steve tries to imagine Bucky’s face, bathed in starlight and in the light of a different moon. “We’ll go together,” he says, and then going for self-deprecating bravado: “since I’m an experienced space explorer and all.” Maybe after he’s done with the ring, maybe after the stones are done, maybe after the UD: maybe there will be time for all of the rest.

Bucky turns to look at him and Steve meets his gaze. His dark hair whips around his face and his eyes are so blue. The moment drags as the wind bounces off the canyon walls, echoing around them. “Together. We could go anywhere,” Bucky whispers, like the words are fragile. “Or nowhere at all, and it would still be...”

Steve keeps all the air in his lungs, waiting for Bucky to finish. The space between them feels dark and mysterious, an unknowable chasm that stretches down so far that Steve can only guess at it. Bucky has a question in his eyes and Steve wishes he knew what it was. 

_I’ll give you anything, _ he thinks in answer to the question he doesn't know, but the words stay stuck in his throat. In his sleeping bag, his hands start to shake a little and he clenches them into fists.

Bucky doesn’t say another word and, after several beats, he turns his face back to the sky. A barely there sigh slides past his his lips and he closes his eyes for a long moment. Steve can hear him breathing as the stars spin across the darkness. 

### 

“We’ll have to do this again next year,” Bucky says, when they’re finally in the limo back to the airfield. He’s stretched out with his legs up on adjoining seat and the very tip of his nose is a little red with sunburn. “We can bring Buster along - see how good his hunting skills are.”

Steve nods. “Next year,” he agrees. “We’ll be back.”

Bucky sends him a sidelong glance. Steve can’t quite get a read on his tight expression. “Maybe we’ll get two beds next time, huh? You won’t have to deal with me kicking.”

“I didn’t mind,” Steve says. He can’t look at Bucky’s soft face so he gazes down at his gnarled hands. He flexes his fingers and feels the pressure where the ring rests beneath his deeply furrowed knuckle. “I wouldn’t change anything about this trip, Buck,” he murmurs and cringes a little at the vulnerability. 

Bucky lets his head roll to the side and his mouth is soft, not quite a smile. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see him studying his profile. “I wouldn’t either,” he finally says. “Wouldn’t change a single thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely comments! Chapter 8 (2028) will be posted on Wednesday, 11/6/19.


	8. 2028

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2028, Steve gets sick.

### 2028

It started as a cough in December that Steve couldn’t shake and a worsening tremor in his fingers in the late evening that makes it hard for him to read after dinner. By the new year, he is exhausted all of the time and he finds his strides slowing as his muscles feel actually weak for the first time in decades. His appetite, which has been finicky since they returned from the Grand Canyon, becomes practically non-existent. He forces himself to eat three meals each day, but the amount of food he can get down keeps shrinking and he notices his clothes growing baggier, his wrists shrinking into his sleeves.

Buster worries over him, meowing when Steve takes too long to get out of bed in the morning or scrapes most of his dinner into the garbage disposal. Some nights, the thought of walking to his bed from his chair is just too exhausting and he falls asleep upright, waking up in the wee hours of the morning with an ache in his neck and Buster staring at him unblinkingly.

“I'm fine,” Steve tells the cat, ignoring how heavy the ring feels on his finger. “I'm okay.”

Buster flicks his tail and blinks his bright green eyes. 

In the cold, gray part of early January, though, Steve has to admit to himself that something is seriously wrong.

He tires too easily during the day, needing to rest on a bench even on the short walk between his home and his office when he starts feeling faint. Buster starts following him to and fro. He sits patiently on Steve’s desk on his shortening work days and then stalks his steps home, sitting patiently by the bench while Steve catches his breath at the halfway point. His cheeks look gaunt in the bathroom mirror and sometimes his hands shake too hard to even unbutton his sweater.

Bucky doesn't know - he and Sam are on the West Coast and have been since before Thanksgiving. Jeremy Deville is said to have crossed into Washington from Canada, making his way down the coast with a small group of UD militia. A credible lead says that he hooked up with some sympathizers in Santa Barbara and he’s being hidden by them while he plans “something big.” When Scott called with the news, Bucky and Sam flew out immediately and have been in California since. 

Steve can't worry them, not with how dangerous Deville is. They need to be fully focused on the mission. So, he has kept the contact with Bucky and Sam steady but mostly professional: weekly check-in calls, daily texts, and sporadic emails, which Steve keeps focused on everyone but him. He doesn't want them to worry. Bucky sent him a framed photo of them at the Grand Canyon for Christmas, along with a gaudy card that Steve keeps on his side table. 

Lately, Steve has tried to time their check-in video calls for the morning, when he looks and feels most like himself. He forces himself out of bed earlier those days, combs his hair and layers on coats and sweaters so Bucky won't see the weight loss. 

On the last Thursday in January, it takes him almost twenty minutes to make the short walk to the office. It’s below zero and soft snowflakes drift down in the pre-dawn light. A year ago, he was doing it in five minutes, three if he was in a hurry. He purposefully leaves before sunrise so barely anyone sees his crawling, stop-and-go pace. There’s snow and ice on the ground and that slows him down even more. The last thing Steve wants to do is fall and complete the painful cliche of an old man tottering along. Buster nudges at him worriedly when he starts wheezing as he climbs the last set of stairs. 

Steve still manages to make himself presentable for Bucky and Sam though, making sure there's no sweat on his cheeks (despite the chilliness) and dimming the lights so they won't be able to tell how pale he is. 

“I'm not lying to him,” he tells Buster when the cat grumps at him. “He has enough to worry about. That's all.”

Bucky is building a tan, even in early January, and he’s laughing easily, teasing Sam with a familiarity that is only born through weeks and months of battle. His eyes glimmer, even in the washed-out colors of screen, and Steve is mesmerized. 

“When do you think you’ll be back?” he asks, tapping his pen on his notepad. 

“Why? Ya miss us, Cap?” Sam laughs and grins. The red, white, and blue of his uniform looks so at home on him now. 

“Wouldn’t mind having my two best guys home,” Steve says, grateful that his reading glasses obscure his eyes just a little. “Nights are getting cold here.”

“A couple more weeks, Steve,” Bucky says. “We want to turn over every rock that these bastards could be hiding under. This is the closest we've been in months. Then we’ll come home.”

_Home._

Steve goes to Bruce the next day, sits in his large office and doesn’t meet Bruce’s worried gaze. 

“I need you to run the tests,” he tells him, hating the way there’s a shake in his voice now. He looks down at how the old, thin skin stretches bruise-like over the narrow bones of his wrist.

Bruce frowns at him, deeply kind in that way Bruce has always been. “You’re not well.”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. The serum kept it thick and soft for years, but now it feels wispy and thin, the beginnings of baldness finally coming. “I feel like I did that year, when the serum started failing. It’s started again. I’m…”

_I’m afraid. _

Bruce lays a giant hand on his shoulder, careful of his strength.

Steve squares his shoulders and lifts his head. He looks Bruce directly in the eyes. He feels like he did all those decades ago, staring up at Thanos and knowing it was hopeless - but also knowing he had to try. 

“I want to live,” he says. “You said you could maybe fix the serum. I... I want that.”

He’s bedridden by mid-February.

Sam and Bucky get delayed again with reports Deville was spotted at a militia camp near Las Vegas. When the morning finally comes that Steve can’t get out of bed on his own, he texts Bucky that he’ll be in meetings in D.C. and sends Wanda in his place for the weekly check-in call the next day. 

The medical team comes out, Bruce leading them, and they shake their heads. The serum’s efficacy has dropped below even what Bruce had predicted: less than half a percent. His body is failing and nothing is around to stop it. They want to take him into the medical facility right then and there. They want to run more tests, try various experimental treatments, hook him up to life support. They want to bring all of technology to bear on his old body to make it work just a little while longer.

Steve shakes his head. If he's going to die, he will do it on his own terms.

He wants to be in his own bed, in his own room, with Buster curled next to him and the pictures of Peggy, Bucky, Sam, Natasha, Tony and Morgan, and the Howlies all carefully laid out on the dresser where he can see them, even if he can’t lift his head from the pillow. The picture of him and Bucky at the Grand Canyon is the closest to his head. 

Wanda and Maria plead with him to tell Bucky and Sam, to call them back to the compound immediately; but there’s nothing they can do here. They can't cure Steve. They need to finish what they started out there. It’s better this way, he tells them. He won’t be a distraction. He won’t be the reason they get pulled off of the field.

Hill calls him a stubborn old coot and storms out of the house, slamming the door behind her. 

Steve listens to her go and closes his eyes.

Wanda is quieter. She lays her hand on his and lingers for several moments. When he opens his eyes, she is staring at him hard, her face wreathed with grief. Without a word, she leaves his bedside and goes to the kitchen. He can hear her banging around, purposefully noisy as she vents her frustration.

Death is always something to be raged against. Steve rubs his ring, the tiny murmur of heat humming beneath the gold. Buster shivers a little against his ribs and Steve lays a gentle hand on his friend’s head. “You’ve been good to me,” he tells the cat. “Bucky will take care of you.” 

He still texts Bucky as often as he can, sends him pictures of Buster perched on his cat tree or the crossword he’s working on. Wanda keeps doing the weekly check-ins and Steve texts excuses the night before. _Sorry, driving out to the city for the day. _Or: _plumbing emergency out in the dorms. Text later?_

The team on base take shifts to sit with him, when the doctors say he shouldn't be left alone. In an emergency, a medical team from the infirmary can get to his bedside in 145 seconds and somehow that still isn't close enough. _Someone should be with him all the time, just in case, _they say, mincing their words like Steve doesn't know exactly what they're thinking_. _

There's a little schedule that Wanda prints off and hangs on his fridge, color coded and neat, with reminders to feed Buster and bring Steve in his meds.

Maria takes the mornings. She shows up just after sunrise, already dressed and polished. She brings her tablet and reads to Steve the latest news stories and updates from Wakanda or the West Coast. If he's feeling strong, she helps him out to the living room and he sits in his favorite chair with Buster in his lap and watches the parking lot fill up with workers.

Peter takes the early afternoons. He brings homework and rambles on to Steve about math and science and history and the papers he's writing and the friends he's made. He talks about Morgan and Pepper and Aunt May and Happy. Sometimes, the flow of words gets to be too much and Steve just closes his eyes and let it all rush over him. On good days, he and Peter eat lunch out on the porch. On bad days, Peter takes away his whole tray uneaten.

Wanda comes in the late afternoon and stays until after dinner. She brings knitting and whatever novel she's reading. Sometimes, they'll watch movies while she knits and other times, she’ll read aloud from her book. Steve often finds himself falling into naps around then and he’ll wake up from quiet dreams to her gentle humming. She makes dinner for both of them, traditional foods from Sokovia. He typically eats in bed now, but a couple times he manages to get out to the dining table with her help. Her quiet presence soothes his aching bones.

“Bucky and Sam would want to know,” Wanda tells him gently one night, after she cleared the dinner tray away and Steve is struggling to keep his eyes open. “You can’t keep this from him, Steve. He’d want to be here for you. What if…” She can’t finish and she knots her fingers in her lap, stares down at them. _What if you die before they return. _

Steve shakes his head. She means well - but he knows that won’t happen. Steve has spent his years fighting off death, he can do it to wait for Bucky.

She nods, mouth a thin line. “We will respect your wishes,” she says. “But please, Steve. Don't do that to him. He wouldn't survive it.”

Bruce doesn't sleep much so he takes the nights, his research spread out on Steve’s bed as he types away at his oversized laptop. Steve wakes up from strange dreams to see blue light pooling over the wide planes of his face.

“Any luck?” he rasps and Bruce just looks sad.

Morgan, Pepper, and Happy come to visit the last week of February. Morgan is sprouting up like a weed. Her tenth birthday is getting close and Steve sees Tony so clearly in the crinkle of her smile. He can’t tell if it’s grief or hope that fills his insides up to the brim. She sits on the bed next to him, crossed legged and tells him about a book report she's doing for school and the robot she's building in the garage. She chatters and Steve stays awake as long as he can, urging her to keep going whenever she slows down. He wants to hear all of it. He wants to imagine the full and amazing life she is going to have.

“Your dad would be so proud of you,” he tells her, hoarse and shaky. “He always told me that you were the most amazing person in the whole world.”

Pepper doesn't say much but she presses a kiss to his forehead as they leave, when he's finally too exhausted to talk any longer. “You've been a good friend, Steve,” she tells him. “We can't ever repay you.”

Happy shakes his hand and doesn’t say anything at all.

Clint somehow finds out and calls Steve up the day after Pepper visits. He rambles to Steve about his farm, the crops, the new greenhouse he’s building. His daughter and he are working on a car together. “Was never much good at engines,” Clint says. “Not like Tony.”

Steve smiles and he can see Nat and Tony so clearly it takes his breath away. “No one was like Tony.”

Clint breathes quietly over the phone for a long moment and then says, “You’ll tell them hello, won’t you? When you see them? From me.”

“Yeah, Clint,” Steve says, just as quietly so Wanda won’t hear where she’s bent over her knitting. “I’ll tell them.”

He’s sleeping when Sam and Bucky finally land eight days later. It’s early March and the last of the snow is finally starting to melt into messy mud puddles. Wanda has been staying with him more frequently the last couple days as he’s gotten weaker, clearing away the trays of food he can’t bring himself to eat. He’s sleeping most of the day now. Steve can’t remember ever feeling this exhausted.

Steve doesn’t even know they’re back until Bucky’s voice, raised with fear and coming from his own living room, wakes him. Buster lifts his head but doesn’t move from Steve’s side - not much drags him from the bed these days.

“Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me sooner?” Bucky is saying. Steve can picture him: the way he must be pacing back and forth and running a hand over his hair. “I had to hear it from Maria on the fucking landing pad.”

“Shh. He’s sleeping,” Wanda says. “And, he didn’t want us to - you know how stubborn he is.” A pause. “I’m sorry, Bucky. I know what he means to you.”

Bucky exhales loudly. “How is he?”

There's no response from Wanda that Steve can hear but Bucky makes a raw, grief-stricken noise that hurts Steve’s own throat.

“Buck,” Steve says, as loud as he can manage, pushing himself up on his elbows.

Their conversation stops and Bucky’s familiar footsteps come toward his room. He pushes open the cracked door and Steve’s lungs catch. Bucky is windblown, cheeks reddened like he’d run all the way to Steve from the airfield the second they landed. He crosses straight to Steve, kicking the door shut with his heel and sinking into the chair at the bedside. His eyes are hot, burning up from the inside out, and Steve shrinks a little under them, falling back onto the pillow.

When Bucky takes his hand, Steve realizes that he’s trembling all over. “I’m not ready,” he says, voice hoarse and the fury melts away and he just looks exhausted. “Steve. It's not fair. I’m not ready. This isn’t it.” He bends at the waist, brushes a kiss to Steve’s gnarled knuckles. 

Steve holds his hand and strokes his fingers. “It’s going to be okay,” he says, not because it is but because all that matters now is Bucky. He will leave Bucky with as much peace as he can. “It’s okay.” 

He can’t stop the weakness in his voice, the shake of his limbs, no matter how he tries. Without a cure from Bruce, death is inevitable - but Steve will make it as gentle for Bucky as he can. 

“I don’t know how to be me without you,” Bucky tells him. “I never have.”

Steve looks at Bucky and thinks of him sitting on the couch with Buster in his lap, watching sports, and teasing Sam, and caring for his teammates. He thinks of the shine in Bucky’s eyes and the beam of his smile and the gentle way he touches those he cares about. He thinks of the way Bucky has always been able to build a home, long before Steve learned. He sees Bucky doing it now - he sees him doing it fifty years from now. Steve finds the warm glow of love in his chest and leans into it, lets it shine through his eyes. “Yes,” Steve says. “You do. You’ve always been the braver one, Buck.”

Bucky practically moves into the little house. He sleeps on the floor by the bed, pushes Steve to eat, plays with Buster, reads to him in the evenings, makes him take all the useless medications the doctors send over from the infirmary that Steve refuses to visit. 

“You’ve gotten way too skinny,” he frets as Steve struggles to finish yet another meal. “You need to eat more. Get your strength up.” After that first day of despair, Bucky talks like this is just the flu: a mild illness to be overcome with chicken soup and bed rest.

Steve doesn’t tell Bucky what he asked of Bruce. There’s no point. 

If Bruce succeeds, then Bucky will know soon enough. If Bruce fails, then Bucky won’t have false hopes dashed. He can see the toll this is taking on Bucky: how his eyes are dull and red and his cheeks are hollow and dark. 

Sam comes by, typically first thing in the morning before he heads into work. He sits with Steve while Bucky hurries through a shower and reads aloud over his reports from the prior day. 

“Your paperwork is piling up,” he tells Steve, leaning forward on his knees. “Gonna have to start docking your pay.” It’s only been a week since he and Bucky got home but his face is already lined with worry.

Steve tries to summon the energy to smile. He’s propped up on pillows with a breakfast tray across his lap. On it, there’s a bowl of oatmeal with about four spoonfuls of brown sugar across the top. Steve has so far managed to take about three bites. A glass of orange juice, so far untouched, sits right next to it. “I’ll be back at it in no time,” he tells Sam as he fiddles with the spoon. “Can’t let us run out of toilet paper.”

Buster is sitting on the end of his bed, staring pointedly at Steve’s breakfast. Steve takes another tiny bite just to appease him.

Sam laughs and Steve can hear how it’s forced. “I’m counting on that.” He pauses and lays a gentle hand on Steve’s leg. “You better finish that oatmeal, buddy, or Bucky will be pissed at both of us when he gets done with that shower. Not to mention your damn cat.”

“Bucky’s not eating enough himself,” Steve grouses right back. “I don't think he's sleeping well either.” Buster has been a little finicky with his food too, Steve’s noticed, though Bucky has been coaxing him to eat with fresh salmon and bites of turkey.

“We’re all worried about you, Steve.” Sam’s face is patient. “Just focus on getting better. I’ll make sure he eats too.”

The words hurt and Steve forces down a spoonful of oatmeal just so he can ignore the misplaced optimism. “I know I don't have to ask,” he says when he's swallowed. “But, I’m glad he has you, Sam. I'm glad you have each other. It makes me feel better to know you'll take care of each other, after.”

Sam interrupts the rest with a pained noise, mouth going tight with grief.

Distantly, the shower turns off and Steve takes another bite, purposefully looking down so Sam can gather himself. The oats are gluey in his mouth, too sweet and cool. He swallows and feels it go all the way down to his gut. The bowl is only half empty and already Steve can’t imagine forcing down another bite. He takes a drink of the orange juice instead. He feels a gentle pressure on his side and looks down to see Buster curling against his hip.

Steve pets him gently. _They’ll take care of you too_, he thinks.

When he looks back up, Sam is as unflappable as ever. “Yeah, Steve,” he says, almost a whisper even though Bucky is still in the bathroom. “We’ll take care of each other. I promise. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Right before Sam leaves, he leans in to pick up Steve’s hand and squeeze it. “See you tomorrow, Steve,” he says. “Better have gotten some of those reports done by then.”

Steve nods and squeezes back as hard as he can. He's exhausted, just from eating breakfast, and he leans back on his pillows with a long sigh.

Outside his room, close enough he can see their shadows stretching across the rug, he can hear Bucky and Sam whispering to each other. They keep their voices low enough he can’t make out the words.

When Bucky comes back in, he’s smiling brightly but his eyes are red rimmed. “Sam will be back for dinner tonight,” he says, clearing the tray and for once not commenting on how little Steve has eaten.

Every day that goes by, Bucky and Sam look more and more worried. Bucky gets dark circles under his eyes and Sam lingers in the mornings like he's afraid to leave. Wanda still comes by in the evenings, sitting with Steve so Bucky can make dinner and handle any compound business that can’t wait. Buster refuses to leave Steve’s side, except for the litter box, and Bucky starts bringing his bowl of food and water in there, setting them right next to the bed so Buster will eat. He won’t play with his toys and Steve finds himself fretting over the cat.

Steve does his best to smile, to laugh at Sam’s jokes and eat the food Bucky puts in front of him. He would do anything, he thinks, to make all of this easier on them. Steve has known intellectually, since the day he woke up and realized he was _old_, that he would die before Bucky and Sam. The reality is harsher than he'd imagined. He thought he had more time, though, decades to be with them. He thought death would be like the slow winding down of a music box. Steve doesn’t want to leave them, not like this.

There’s not much he can do about that though. He can feel his body slowing down, falling to pieces around him. So he focuses on what he can do: Steve can attempt to take care of Sam and Bucky with the time he has left. He can make them feel like they’ve done all they can; he can give them time to grieve; he can help them say goodbye.

The nights are the worst. The wrongness surges up Steve’s insides, makes him sick and shaky. The old pain from his arm flares again and he can’t get comfortable, tossing and turning in the bed. The fevers come, like they did when he was a child, rolling over him and leaving him sweaty and weak and drained like an old rag.

Bucky sits up with him, puts cool cloths on his forehead and helps him drink lukewarm tea. He sings to Steve and, when that fails, just holds him through the worst of the nausea.

“I never meant to leave you,” Steve tells Bucky as they huddle together on the bathroom floor on an especially bad night. All the secrets are finally pouring out of him into the air between them. “I didn’t... I thought you'd barely even know. It would only seem like I was gone a few seconds and I’d come back just how I was. But when the serum started to fail...” Steve closes his eyes. “I didn’t think. I was too cocky. I thought I’d live forever. I thought I could be with Peggy and still be here for the team.”

“Hush,” Bucky whispers, brushing the white hair from Steve’s forehead. “I know. You didn’t abandon us. You came back. You’ve been here.”

The words are nice and Steve lets himself believe them. He gazes at Bucky and tries not to think of all the years he could have had if only… 

“You should move in here, after,” he tells Bucky, his voice hoarse and trembling as Bucky carries him back to his bed. Bucky is cradling him close to his chest and Steve feels small, like time has rewound entirely and he's a young man again. “Sam won’t mind. Take care of Buster.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, laying him down against the pillows. He’s pale in the dim lamplight as he pulls the covers up to his chest and fluffing the pillows.

Buster jumps up on the bed and he’s glaring at Steve too.

Steve tries to smile. “You’ll be okay. You and Sam and Buster. You’ll all take care of each other. I know it.”

Bucky sits down on the side of the bed and puts his head in his hands. “Steve,” he says. His voice is hoarse and exhausted. “Please don’t do this to me. Please.”

There's so much pain in his voice and Steve closes his eyes against it. After a moment, Steve feels the bed shift and Bucky is curling against him, tugging him tight against his chest.

“You're not going anywhere,” Bucky says to his hair and Steve almost believes it's true.

Bruce comes to speak to them twelve days after Bucky returns, oversized in the small bedroom. 

Sam and Bucky sit on either side of Steve, Buster perched on the bed like a watchdog. Before Bruce starts talking, Bucky reaches out and takes Steve’s hand in both of his own, wrapping it up like he can push some of his own strength into Steve.

“It’s the dimension travel,” Bruce tells them, face heavy with sorrow. “Each reality is stabilized by the presence of the Infinity Stones and, when a reality branches, the frequency the stones emit into that universe mutates as well.” Bruce turns his tablet around and rainbow streams of light twist like ribbons across the screen. 

“Based on what I’m seeing,” Bruce says, and the model changes to show the ribbons engulfing a smaller cell, “the resonance becomes toxic to anything that originated in a different timeline. It’s a defense mechanism… like self-protecting white blood cells attacking foreign elements in the body.”

“So this frequency was attacking Steve the entire time he was there?” Sam’s hands are fists on his knees, face tight. Steve wishes he could soothe him. “Like he was a goddamn germ?”

Bruce meets Steve’s eyes. “They’re meant to destroy any elements that could continue to alter or harm that timeline. It’s protection against further interference that would change the resonance. A normal human would’ve died in months, if not weeks, after the timelines branched. You had the serum though and it kept regenerating, kept fighting back. That’s why you survived there for as long as you did.”

Steve swallows. God, he had been so foolish, assuming they had learned everything there was to know about time travel and dimension hopping after a few days of experiments. What if the serum hadn’t been able to protect him? He would’ve gone back and died within months of walking through Peggy’s door? There would’ve been no life, no return. Bucky would have been left with an empty platform and a broken promise.

Bucky’s hands squeeze him tighter and Steve knows he’s envisioning the exact same things. 

Bruce sets his tablet down. “Eventually, because the serum has elements of the Space Stone, it was able to stabilize somewhat and slow the decay by adapting to the alternate timeline’s resonance. But, once you came back to this timeline, the degraded serum was unable to fully reintegrate with the remnants of the Stones’ resonance here and it started decaying again. Eventually, probably around the time you started feeling so sick, it turned on you, attacking you like it would a foreign element in the timeline. It’s poisoning you.”

“So he needs to go back to the other timeline? Then the serum will stop killing him?” Sam says and Steve draws a breath because, no. He can’t go back there. He's put that place behind him. 

Bruce shakes his head. “The Infinity Stones over there would still register him as a threat. The serum would eventually keep decaying and he’d die, just slower.”

“How long?” Steve asks. His fingers are so cold and they’re shaking in Bucky’s grasp. 

Bucky pulls their hands closer to his own chest, chafes his fingers like he can warm them up. 

“Here? Maybe six months. There? Maybe a year or two. Assuming that the serum would be able to fix the damage already done to your body here.”

Bucky makes a low, hurt noise, and his face spasms like he’d been punched “Is there anything you can do?” Bucky asks. 

Bruce takes off his glasses and pinches his nose. “Maybe if we had a sample of the serum from before the realities branched. We could try to scrub the corrupted serum from his blood and integrate the fresh serum and hope that whatever receptors were created by the vita-rays are still working and are enough to counteract the corrupted particles. It’s a long shot.”

Steve nods. That’s it then. The serum has been gone for almost a century. There will be no more second chances. 

He closes his eyes and tries not to think of all the years he could’ve had. His thumb turns his ring around and around. There's a temptation there, a tiny pull against his weak heart. It wouldn't take much; just a small request. He extends a tiny ask, a barely there question, _could you?_

The ring warms under his touch - but then goes cold. No. The serum in his blood has been mutated by the Infinity Stones of another timeline. That’s not something that can be undone with a snap. This is the end. 

He doesn’t have time to wallow. There are things he needs to do: goodbyes and words of wisdom and final plans. He’ll spend whatever time he has left with Bucky - maybe they can go back to the Grand Canyon. He will make the most of it. Then, he will call Strange and pass the stones to him. The end. 

Next to him, Bucky says, “I’ll do it.”

### Bucky

The quantum tunnel has been under lock and key in one of the compound’s giant vaults since Steve’s last trip. Bruce dusts the whole thing off carefully as they set it up in the hangar. 

“I just want to remind you,” he says, in that warm voice of his. “That this is dangerous stuff. We did it back then because we had to. Each jump we made, there was a chance we’d never come back.”

Bucky nods. He’s wearing a mock-up of one their old suits, dark gray instead of white, and blue instead of red. Bruce pulled it out of some lab and Bucky changed into it behind one of the trucks. He can’t stop seeing Steve’s face in his head, the way his hand shook against Bucky’s arm when he begged him not to go one last time. 

Sam is standing against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “I don’t like this,” he says. “Last time any of us played at something like this, a whole ass alien army came through.”

“So we’re gonna let Steve die?” It comes out more strangled than Bucky intended. He stops and swallows, makes himself take a few deep breaths. Focus. Breathe. 

Sam looks devastated by his words and Bucky regrets being harsh instantly - this is almost as hard for Sam as it is for Bucky. Sam’s been there with him, watching Steve decline. He's let Bucky cry on his shoulder and has cried himself. Sam will mourn Steve as fiercely as Bucky will.

Sam wilts and rubs a hand over his face. “This isn’t like before, Bucky. We need you here. You know what’s going on in the world, I can’t lose you. I can't do this alone. Don't make me lose both of you at the same time. I couldn't do that.”

A cool breeze is flowing through the open door and Bucky fixes his gaze on the gray sky beyond, across the half-melted snow toward the small house by the river and Steve_. Home._

The last few years he’s gotten to see Steve finally, finally at peace. Back before, when Steve was restless and stubborn and fiery, Buck wasn’t even able to imagine a Steve that could settle down, that could be happy with the quiet, gentle life. He hadn’t been able to fit his life to Steve’s properly. There had been things he needed desperately and Steve hadn’t been able to provide them. Somehow, though, in all the mysterious ways of the universe, he’s gotten to see _this Steve_. His Steve, the one he goes home to in the evenings, isn’t constantly looking for the next battle, charging headlong and heedless of his surroundings. His Steve loves his cat and tea and crossword puzzles. He has photos on the wall and a favorite pair of slippers. Bucky has gotten to see Steve soft and vulnerable in ways that he’s only gotten the barest glimpses of before.

Bucky understood, all those years ago, why Steve stayed behind. If Bucky got the chance to go back, back to Brooklyn or even back to London, he’d have taken it. He would’ve undone all the wrongs: caught Steve’s hand, gone home to his family, lived a quiet life...

It would just take a blink of an eye and Bucky would know everything he had missed. 

But... he’s jealous. He’s always been a bit jealous. Steve got his life. Peggy got her Steve. Hell, the Bucky and Steve of that other timeline got each other _and_ Peggy _and_ his Steve. This, though, this is his time at long last. He is ready. Steve is ready. So Bucky’s going to fight for it. He wants the years. He wants the decades. He wants the big moments and the small moments. He wants the things that he’s barely let even fully form in his own mind.

Bucky closes his eyes and imagines Steve, sitting in the chair across from him in his sweater, and how his eyes go soft and fond - how he finally has nothing to prove to himself or the world. 

He thinks of the warmth in his chest when he lands home from a mission: of walking down the little pathway toward the blue house by the river and seeing the glow of lamplight through the windows, the dark silhouette of the man waiting for him within. Getting to come home to Steve has been one of the most unexpected pleasures of his long life.

His heart aches when he thinks of Steve, a slow wonderful ache that squeezes the very air out of his lungs. It’s been obvious to him for a long time what it is and he's not going to let it go without a fight.

He steps onto the platform. “I love him, Sam,” he says quietly. 

The tunnel takes him away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter (1942) will be posted tomorrow!


	9. 1942

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 1942, Bucky is the one with the plan.

### 1942

Bucky rematerializes in a broom closet, dimly lit and half full of janitorial supplies. He stumbles a little, getting his balance, and taps his wrist. The suit retracts and he’s wearing the olive green of a US Army soldier in 1942. 

It’s quiet outside the door and he slides out into a long hallway. It’s plain brown, a heavy carpet across the floor to muffle sound. There are no windows.

Bucky’s never been here before but Steve described what happened here often enough. He walks down the hall until he comes to a flight of stairs. 

At the bottom, there’s another door and he pushes it open to the bustle of people. It looks like one of the labs at the compound: hard cement floors and shiny equipment. A raised voice draws his attention to the console and he sees Howard Stark standing there, dark hair sticking up every which way. 

His breath hitches, the whole room twisting sideways like a funny mirror because, if Howard is right there, then...

A door opens above and Bucky’s eyes are drawn up and up and there is Steve. 

It’s the Steve Bucky thought he would never see again: ninety pounds soaking wet with his pinched face and too-big hands and nose. He has a cap on his head and his uniform is pressed. It’s like Bucky is twenty-five again. 

Peggy is there next to him and Bucky lets himself watch them together: the easy way their bodies respond to each other, Peggy’s eyes tracking him even when Steve leaves her to walk toward the machine alone. Together, they are more beautiful than he remembered: resilient and strong in a world constantly underestimating them. 

Steve doesn’t look in his direction as he unbuttons his uniform. His gaze is on the huge metal chamber so Bucky can look his fill. He’s not trembling or flinching - but Bucky can see the trepidation in his eyes. He looks so young to Bucky now. His narrow forehead is wrinkling a little, the sides of his eyes squinting, and it's an expression that Bucky knows so well, even if his face is now a whole century older. 

The serum is brought out, tubes of bright blue liquid and Bucky slides forward. 

There should be one extra, that’s what Steve said. It was grabbed and broken by a Hydra operative within minutes after the procedure was finished so all Bucky has to do is snatch it up first, as soon as the chamber reopened.

He's nearby as Steve lies down in the chamber. He lingers, close enough to count all of Steve’s ribs beneath his pale skin. This Steve is so familiar and not at the same time. Bucky’s Steve has wrinkled hands and narrow shoulders, stooped with the passage of time. When Bucky’s Steve smiles, his eyes almost vanish in a hundred creases that tell the story of a thousand smiles and a thousand frowns. That raw edge of fury has settled into something golden and gleaming in Bucky’s Steve. There’s over a hundred years between this Steve and the Steve that Bucky loves so fiercely now. 

_Just you wait,_ Bucky wants to murmur in this Steve’s ear, _it’s going to be beautiful, even all the devastating parts. _

Bucky knows how this story ends. He’s imagined this moment a hundred times, pictured the way Steve locks his jaw as the chamber closes around him. It will take about thirty-five seconds and Captain America will emerge from the metal. That doesn’t make it any easier to hear Steve scream as the humming grows louder.

Carter shouts from above and Steve’s gritted voice comes from the machine and Bucky has to press his hands together because he’s starting to shake. _Jesus Christ, Steve. Jesus Christ. You almost died. You almost died. What if you had died?_

It goes on forever, feels like thirty hours rather than thirty seconds. When the chamber’s doors split with a hiss, Bucky can’t help stepping forward because Steve hasn’t made a sound since the humming stopped and what if…

The metal chamber cracks open and Steve is Captain America. He’s gleaming and young and strong and, god, even now Bucky is lightheaded because Steve is so bright and large. He’s hunching awkwardly as they help him down, like his back still pains him even though Bucky knows it doesn’t.

His eyes are wide as he sees true colors for the first time: the bright red of Peggy’s lipstick and the blue of the serum. He’s seeing everything crystal sharp and hearing footsteps a floor away. Steve said it was like going from a muffled black-and-white TV to one of those BARF projections of Stark’s: experiencing the world from underwater and suddenly being in Times Square at high noon on a clear day. 

Bucky’s caught up in it: the play of emotions and realizations across Steve’s face. He swallows drily. 

Then, there’s a clatter and a shout and he remembers the serum. 

_Goddamnit_. 

An explosion goes off somewhere above and a bespectacled man has snatched up the last vial of the serum - the one that Bucky needs.

Erskine goes down. Bucky sees him on his back and Steve is lunging for him. There’s naked panic on Steve’s face and Bucky realizes suddenly that this would be the first time that Steve would’ve ever been in a firefight. Steve may have used his fists in Brooklyn and fired a gun at boot camp - but a real fight? That would be something new to him. 

_God, Steve_, he thinks and then has to refocus because the Hydra agent is bounding up the steps, Peggy Carter close behind him. The blue vial is in his hand. Bucky takes off up the stairs, even though it hurts him to leave Steve behind. His Steve needs him to focus. 

He follows Peggy up the stairs and down the hall, through a shop storefront where a woman lies dead. The Hydra agent jumps into a car and Bucky takes off running, even as another car explodes to his right. Steve said the guy headed for the docks, where he’d parked a submarine. There’s a shortcut and Bucky can get there first. 

This is a Brooklyn he hasn't seen in an entire lifetime. His youth unfurls around him even as he leaps over low walls, dodging the dumpsters and shopkeepers. He sees Steve, skinny and pale, in the corner of his eye as he leaps a wall and skids around the crowded docks. 

The sub is barely poking from the water, dark and ugly where it is slotted between a ship and the brick wall of the dock. He goes down and triggers the self-destruct before climbing up to wait for the agent to arrive. 

First, Bucky hears bullets clanging off something metal and then the Hydra agent comes around the corner, throwing a red-headed boy into the water. He doesn't see Bucky until his metal fist knocks into the side of his head. 

The Hydra agent goes to the bricks, limp and dazed, and Bucky pulls the vial from his front pocket. The blue serum is faintly glowing, shimmering almost in the weak sunlight.

_Got you. _

When Bucky looks up, Steve is already there, just feet away. He's staring at Bucky, face twisted oddly and one hand outstretched. 

“Bucky?” he asks, because of course Steve Rogers would recognize him even with a hat and seventy years of wear on his face. 

Bucky smiles fondly, fingers going to the GPS on his wrist. He can't resist, though. “When I fall,” he says, only loud enough for Steve to hear with his improved senses. “I survive. Look for me.”

Steve’s face is covered in confusion - but, that's okay. He’ll remember this and, maybe, two years from now, he’ll think of it as his Bucky Barnes falls away from his fingers on a snowy cliff side. 

The vial of serum is tucked safely in his belt and Bucky presses the button on the GPS. His suit folds around him, covering his face, and he waits for the sensation of being undone as he is taken back into the quantum realm.

Instead, nothing happens. 

He does not change, he is not called home. The world stays fixed around him, Steve staring at him in puzzlement. 

Bucky taps at it again. 

There's a faint pulse of energy but once again, he stays where he is. 

Well, that's not good. 

Steve is walking forward now, long purposeful strides. His face has cleared of confusion and Bucky now sees the familiar expression of determination. 

“I can explain,” Bucky says. 

“So you really are Bucky?” Steve asks, hours later. It's dark now - Bucky had forgotten how dim the city grew at night before bright LEDs lit up every corner. This part of Brooklyn is still poor and candles flicker in windows more often than electricity. 

“I am.”

“From the future.”

“Yes.” Bucky understands time travel well enough, and isn't that a trip. He can't change his future by being here. Steve will still be half-dead and old in his bed when he returns, no matter what Bucky tells this Steve now.

Bucky’s changed his suit into a pair of khakis and a buttoned shirt, a pairing he vaguely remembers from his closet in the 1940s. Steve, because they're still Steve and Bucky at their core, had agreed to take him back to their apartment and not tell Colonel Phillips about Bucky’s appearance. He has to report back to base first thing in the morning but Bucky is hoping he’ll be well on his way back home by then. 

Steve is taking it all pretty well - then again, he did just get shoved into a metal tube and come out a living god, so this definitely is not the strangest thing that's happened to him today. 

“So we survive the war?” Steve asks. “You look… maybe fifteen years older than you are now? The war must be over by then.”

Bucky winces. “There's always another war,” he says carefully. He probably created a branch the second he told Steve about the fall - but he thought he'd be safely away before the branch fully formed, that it wouldn't matter. Now, he's not sure how much he can say. He doesn't know how the resonance from the Infinity Stones work. Will the serum still work properly for Steve if he stays here too long and the timeline branches around him with every word, every second he's here? 

The kettle starts whistling and Steve gets up, turns off the small stove and gets out two chipped and faded mugs from the small cupboard. He bangs his head against the shelf as he gets out the sugar and cream, stumbling a little. 

“I'm not used to,” Steve gestures down his body and his hands tremble a little as he brings over the cups, setting one in front of Bucky. A splash of cream goes into the cup in front of him and Bucky spoons sugar into his. 

The stretch of time is lumpy and wide but there's something soothing about drinking tea with Steve: a ritual they've done in two centuries and two timelines, decades and moments apart. 

“You'll get used to it,” Bucky tells him quietly. “You’ll…” a tightness fills his throat and he can't resist. “I'm so proud of you, Steve,” he says. “Don't forget that. The things you do. The people you save.”

_You're the most important person in the world_, he wants to say. He can see the beginning pieces of his Steve in the young man across from him. The sharp edge of anger and the burning need to prove something are strong in this Steve - but the kindness and the empathy and the strength are already there, small building blocks compared to the depth of the Steve back home. The righteous indignation will mold into noble conviction. Stubbornness will grow into a sense of purpose. There will be grief enough to move mountains and love…

“You’ll be amazing,” he says. “It'll be hard but you'll never be alone.”

“And what about you?” Steve says quietly. “Are you okay? Are we together?”

Bucky looks into his tea mug. “You save me. We spend a long time apart. But, when I leave here, I'm going back to you.”

“Is that why you need the serum?” Steve asks. 

Bucky presses his hand to the compartment in his belt. “Yes. You're sick. This will cure you.”

Steve’s face scrunches up. “The serum fails?” he asks, looking down at his own hands like he can already see the serum melting away. 

“It won't fail for you,” Bucky says. “Not for a long, long time. If ever. I don't know how much I've changed the future just by being here. Maybe…”

Maybe Bucky won't fall. Maybe Steve won't crash the plane. Maybe Steve will come home and marry Peggy and Bucky will marry a nice girl. Maybe they'll get to 2027 the long way around and somewhere along the line, this Bucky and Steve will start to look at each other differently too. Maybe it will be sooner, if they get to live near each other in peace. Maybe one morning, Bucky will see Steve running next to him and see the way his eyes reflect the sunshine like the ocean and he’ll realize, like Bucky is just beginning to, that the emotion filling his chest is something rare and precious and unbreaking. Maybe, this Steve will turn and the same love will be reflected back.

Maybe all of that will be enough to change the entire universe. 

He can't say any of that. Bucky feels infinitely tender toward the young man in front of him. This Steve has all of his future spilling out like a bright shining road. There are hundreds of possibilities and Bucky wants him to have all of them. Is this what his Steve felt when he first looked the other, younger Bucky in the eyes after he rescued him from Hydra? Just overwhelmed with all the possibilities. 

The GPS at his wrist trills, urgent and sharp. A green light flashes at its center. Whatever went wrong before, they must've fixed it. 

“I have to go,” Bucky says, standing up from the table. 

Steve stands as well, knocking his newly-long legs against the underside. His face is scrunched up still with all the questions he must have. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Bucky tells him and then the world dissolves around him. 

The quantum tunnel ripples and flashes around him, stretching endlessly as his GPS pulls him along, back to his future, away from this young, tender Steve and back to the one he loves. His atoms are pulled apart and remade, coming back together like the end of a song. Home. 

He gasps once and then he is back on the platform with a sensation like waking up from a dream of falling. 

Something is wrong.

Bucky opens his eyes and sees that the whole of the hangar is on fire, smoke pouring from the tall roof into the distant blue sky. An alarm is blaring and someone is screaming. He sees dark figures and bright flashes beyond the flames, twisting together like in battle. 

It’s all distant, though, almost surreal. Right around the platform, the air is clean and fresh and there is no heat from the inferno. It is quiet and calm, the eye of the storm. There is a shimmering purple dome around him, flickering and sparking. There’s something peaceful in the pulsing colors, something old and familiar. Love. 

He looks down and his Steve is kneeling near the control panel, in his bathrobe and slippers, and his frail left hand is raised. Light is pouring from his fingers, from the gold ring, feeding the dome around him, safeguarding his return even as the world burns around them. 

“Bucky,” he says, raspy and broken. He's swaying on his knees. The purple light dances over his grooved face, makes his eyes even more blue and his hair more silver. His entire body is alive with power - it’s like looking at the last flare of a dying sun. 

Bucky catches him just before he falls. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to 2028 tomorrow!


	10. 2028

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in 2028, things are going from bad to worse.

### 2028: Steve

He asks Bucky not to go, begs him. Steve is old and dying and he can’t find any shame left inside when his voice crackles and breaks over the words. He clutches at Bucky’s hands.

“It’s too dangerous,” he tells him as his fingers shake uncontrollably. “Please. Stay here. Stay with me. That’s all I want now. Don’t leave me.”

What if something goes wrong? What if Bucky gets stuck there and his serum is not enough and Bucky dies in the past and Steve never sees him again?

In the back of his mind, Steve understands he needs to call Strange soon. He can’t die with the stones on his finger. He swore he’d protect the stones first and foremost. He needs to fulfill this last part of his mission. But, he knows, like he’s known since the moment he asked Strange for the promise, that unlocking the spell will kill him, faster than the serum and faster than age. Giving up the stones will be the last thing he ever does. 

God help him, he’s selfish, but he wants Bucky to be there. He wants Bucky to hold his hand and tell him everything’s alright. He wants Bucky to be the last thing he sees before he goes to whatever is next. So, Bucky can’t leave, can’t risk his life for Steve’s dwindling one. He can’t. It's not worth it.

Bucky is kind, but firm. He squeezes Steve’s hand in both of his and lays it back down on the bed, even as it shakes. He leans down and presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead. “I’ll come back,” he says and his blue eyes are so earnest. “You won’t even know I’m gone. Just hold on for me.” 

All Steve can hear is Tony’s voice in his head, not long before before he died. “You mess with Time and Time fights back.”

Sam raps softly on the doorframe of the bedroom. “It’s time,” he says. His face is pinched and Steve knows that he's not happy about this either.

Bucky smoothes Steve’s hair back from his face and stares at Steve hard, like he’s steeling himself, and then nods. “Wait for me,” he murmurs to Steve and then he gets up, turning his back and walking away even when Steve calls his name. 

Buster makes worried noises at him, pacing along the bed and nudging at his hands. Steve clutches at his fur with the last of his strength. All of his choices have led him here: lying in a bed, too weak to move, while Bucky risks his life for him. He had never wanted this and he misses, for the first time since getting old, the satisfying burn of a punching bag. 

The curtains are open and Steve can see the hangar through the window. That’s where they’ll set up the quantum tunnel. He’s seen the emergency plans enough times, helped write them himself. Any time, any minute, they’ll be turning it on. Steve won’t even know exactly when Bucky will step out of this timeline. Steve is helpless to stop it. 

At some point, he must pass out because when Steve first hears the alarms, it’s as a part of hazy dreams. He opens his eyes to his bedroom, curtains still pulled back from the window and black smoke rising over the compound. The sun is a little lower in the sky, but only a couple hours must’ve gone by since Bucky left him. The alarm is coming from the direction of the hangar, a steady _whoop whoop whoop_ that drowns out all background noise.

He blinks, slow, muddled thoughts drifting along like a meandering river. Was it all a dream? Is Bucky back yet?

The door to his bedroom slams open and he starts, weakly lifting his hands in defense. 

Sam appears at the edge of his bed. His wings are on and the blue cowl is over his face, bright white A covering his forehead. The shield is on his back. “We're getting you out of here," he says. "Don't worry, Steve." He leans down and gets his arm under Steve’s shoulders and lifts Steve up, blankets and all, cradling him against his chest. He crosses the room in huge strides, heading for the front door. 

"Bucky?" Steve asks, clutching at Sam’s uniform as the world spins. "Where's Bucky?"

Sam tenses ever so slightly as he pushes open the door to Steve's little house with his foot, stepping into the chilly afternoon air. "He's coming," he says, a little delayed, and Steve knows Sam down to his marrow. Sam is lying to him. “He’s right behind us. He asked me to grab you and he’ll meet us at the quinjet.”

He lifts his head off Sam's shoulder and glimpses fire and smoke billowing from the hangar, where they would've set up the quantum platform. He hears sharp bursts of gunfire and the alarm. It all snaps together, breathtakingly clear even in the fog his mind has become. 

Bucky isn't back. Otherwise, Bucky would be the one carrying him out of the house and not Sam. Something has gone terribly wrong. He hears a yowl and looks back toward his house. Buster is sitting on the porch, staring at the hangar as well. 

"Sam?" He presses one hand against Sam’s chest, pushing as hard as he is able. “Where’s Bucky?”

Sam hisses under his breath and then closes his eyes, shaking his head. "We were just sending him back for ten seconds, Steve. Bruce was counting down. He was at four and some guy drove a truck into the side of the hangar. The whole thing exploded so it must've been rigged. Shorted out the circuits."

So they hadn’t been able to bring him back.

"Four armored trucks came through the gates right after that. We think it's Deville himself along with some UD militia guys. It's gonna be fine, Steve. I swear to you. We'll get them under control, restore the power, bring Barnes back through. He'll barely know there was ever a problem. We just need to get you somewhere safe, okay? You and the damn cat, both. You’re a sitting duck out here with Deville running around.”

“No." The word has a rough edge to it, the breath hard over Steve's lungs. Adrenaline is clearing his head a little and Steve can feel the sickness in all his bones now, the wrongness of different realities battling in his blood. It's ripping him apart - but, in every single timeline and world, there has always been one overriding mission. "Sam, put me down."

Sam tightens his hold. "Steve. I can't worry about you and fight them, man. Not to mention, Bucky will kill me if something happens to you. Let me get you to safety. I have the quinjet set on autopilot to take you to Wakanda. You can even take Buster with you. You’ll be safe there. I’ll bring Bucky to you as soon as we have him. Then, we’ll get you the serum and everything will be fine.”

Steve is shaky all over but he lifts his arm as steadily as he can, making a fist of his left hand. _C’mon. _The ring is almost eager against his skin and it surges the second he thinks of it. "You don't need to worry about me, Sam," he says, vision clearing and voice strong again as warmth floods his veins, starting at the ring and working back through him like a surge of electricity. He slides from Sam's arms, stands on his own two feet easily. 

"Steve?" Sam asks and he's staring at Steve's hand. He takes a step back.

Steve follows his gaze. Rainbow light is dancing around his knuckles and up his wrist, flickering and surging. Slowly, Steve rotates his arm and spreads his fingers outward, palm up. The light coalesces into a globe, an almost translucent bubble that floats above his hand as his ring glows like the sun. 

"It's okay, Sam." Steve says. The ring is burning, sharp and bright. The power spreads all the way through his old bones to his weak heart. It doesn't sear this time: this is a low, banked fire, steadying him and filling him all the way to the brim. He can do this.

It doesn't feel quite like Mjolnir. This power doesn't settle naturally into his veins, warm and welcoming like a friend. He can feel the deadliness and the danger simmering in his blood. It's like holding a tiger by the tail. Right now, it may be a slightly tamed tiger - but, at any second, it would be so easy for the stones to obliterate him, erase him from the universe just as they had done to Thanos. 

Steve takes a deep breath. His hands are still wrinkled and his back still bends - but he is on his own two feet. It will be enough. "I'm going to get Bucky," he says. "Pull him out."

There are layers of fear in Sam’s eyes: fear for Steve, fear of Steve, fear of the stones, and fear for Bucky. In the end, he nods. “I’ll help Bruce hold them off. Draw them away,” he says and steps away, leaving the blankets that had been wrapped around Steve behind. He takes the shield off his back and salutes Steve with the other hand. “Please be careful, Steve.”

Steve lifts his arm, pleased that it doesn’t shake at all, and salutes him return. “Go get ‘em, Cap,” he says.

Sam gives him a strained smile and his wings spread, taking him into the air.

Steve starts across the lawn when he’s gone. Snow is still half-melted across the grass, turned to muddy brown slush by boots and tires. The icy mud soaks into his slippers and the bottoms of his pajama pants. He ties his robe tighter and tries to straighten his shoulders.

Steve doesn't realize he's not alone until the brush of a familiar tail curls around his calf, right as he comes up along the back side of the hangar. He looks down and Buster looks back, bright green eyes sharp. 

“Go back to the house,” Steve tells him, pointing. “Wait for me.”

Buster meows once, head cocked.

“You could get hurt,” Steve says. “It’s not safe for you.”

That’s when Steve hears footsteps, coming around the side of the hangar. Buster hisses and arches his back, gaze suddenly fixed in front of them.

“Well, well, well. Looks like you made my job easy by coming to me.”

_Shit._

Steve recognizes the tall man walking toward them instantly. 

Jeremy Deville is wearing a bulky camo outfit and carrying a modified AR-15 in both hands. His grip is a little awkward; for all his big talk, he is clearly not a soldier. He's gaunt and his dark hair is lank over his forehead, cold eyes staring directly at Steve. “I knew you'd be here,” he says. “Don't seem so tough now. You're coming with me. I have plans for you.” He swings the gun around so it's level with Steve’s chest. He doesn't notice or doesn't care about the rainbows spreading up Steve’s arm.

“You don't want to do this,” Steve says.

Deville laughs, an ugly, joyless noise. “I do, though. You're a traitor to everyone who wasn't taken. You will stand trial for your actions against this planet, for upsetting the balance of the universe. You will be held accountable for your crimes. Then, everyone will see what a fraud you are.” His face is red by the end of his spiel and the gun is wavering dangerously in his arms.

Steve swallows. “I don't want to hurt you,” he tries again. He's interrupted by a furious yowl from Buster. The cat is in front of Steve now, fur fluffed up around his neck and ears pinned back.

Deville’s gaze drops to Buster and a sneer twists his mouth. He shifts the gun, lowering it to point directly at Buster. “Fucking cat,” he says, finger tightening on the trigger. “We don't need you.”

Steve takes a step forward, letting the power of the ring start to surge.

Before he can do anything, though, Buster arches his back and long black tentacles shoot from his tiny mouth. They're dark and thick and they flail wildly in the air before charging straight at Deville. Buster doesn't even lift a single paw as they wrap around the man and his AR-15.

Deville never has a chance. He gets out a single sharp shout as the tentacles rip his gun from his hands and fling it in the direction of the hangar. Then, the shiny, thick tentacles turn Deville upside down and shake him hard, like a child trying to get the last penny out of a piggy bank.

Buster makes a humphing noise that Steve recognizes as annoyance. It's the same one he makes when his food dish is empty. 

Deville’s shouts turn to shrieks and Buster sends a sidelong look to Steve. There's a clear question in his gaze that Steve recognizes from other battlefields.

Steve lets out a breath. “We want him alive,” he answers his cat carefully, feeling a little like this is a dream. 

Buster humphs again and Steve remembers the fishing boat and Buster’s disgruntled expression when Steve returned the fish to the river. Still, the cat lets Deville flail for only a few seconds longer before he tosses Deville, sending him turning ass over teakettle, at least twenty meters. He hits the ground and does not get up. The tentacles continue to swing wildly in mid air for a moment more and then retract, vanishing into Buster’s body like they'd never been there at all.

Steve stares down and Buster stares back. 

“We’re going to have to talk about this,” Steve tells the cat, or whatever it is, and then keeps walking. “In the meantime, you're in charge of perimeter defense.”

He could be imagining it, but he thinks Buster walks a little taller. 

The platform looks the same as Steve remembers, small and glass and so unassuming for something that could send someone ripping through alternate timelines. It’s quiet now, the hum of energy completely dead, as smoke and ash wreath around it.

Steve lets the bubble of light expand around him, growing and shimmering so that it encases the control panel and the platform. Behind him, he can hear gunfire and crackling flames. None of that matters.

Buster’s fur fluffs up and he edges closer to Steve as the bubble ripples around them. His bright green eyes send a slanted glance in his direction. 

“It's okay,” Steve tells him. “We can do this. Just make sure no one gets too close.” He takes a deep breath and lays one hand on the controls. He’s not Tony or Bruce or Shuri. This stuff has always been beyond him. But, it’s not beyond the stones.

_C’mon._

Green and blue twine around his fingers, slithering across the buttons and levers. The guts of the machine give a low whine and then there’s a surge of energy, so strong that a shower or sparks flies out at Steve. He ducks and Buster yowls. 

The platform begins to glow white, humming faster and louder. 

_Bring him back._

After that, the world goes blurry, like a dream where everything is washed-out smears of familiar places. The machine is making a high pitched hum and Steve leaves the controls, stumbles forward, and goes to his knees right in front of the platform. Light is still pouring from the ring and he can't stop it anymore, can't control it. He asked so much and now, the stones are almost too eager to extend their power. They are strong and fast and too much for him, tearing at the very fabric of his body. Purple and blue are lacing the air around him, the surface of a pond turned upside down.

_Bucky_. 

He can hear shouts and gunfire and feel the heat of fire all around him. Smoke is pushing against the glossy purple barrier, swirling as it searches like a living thing for a way inside. Steve doesn't move. He doesn't flinch even as he feels his bones burn. 

For the last five years, Steve has carved out a home for Bucky, a space for him to rest. This is that place now: this bubble of serenity while the fire roars beyond them. 

White light flares out of a pinpoint and then Bucky is there, tall and hale. He's back.

Steve sags as the strange power that had been sustaining him drains away. He's left feeling cold and flimsy, like sand as the tide pulls back. The purple dome around them wavers. "Bucky," he says. It doesn't sound like his own voice. 

He can't hold himself up any longer, even on his knees, so he topples forward. The stones are roaring now, charging through him like a hurricane, ripping up all the remaining bits of him. _This is it_, he thinks, grief welling in his throat. No more years, no more soft looks, no more touches. He's going to go and leave Bucky behind and Bucky will live for years and years and Steve will see none of it. 

The ring burns hotter and Bucky catches him. He aches too much to really feel Bucky's chest against his cheek, but Bucky is there and that soothes him a little, makes the sobs easier to swallow. A rough tongue licks the hand that isn't burning and Steve knows it's Buster. He can hear Bucky's voice, feel his fingers on his face, through the swirl of noise inside his head. 

He's saying _Steve_ and _hold on_ and Steve will, but not for much longer. It's almost done. The stones are telling him that, a murmur in the back of his head, an undercurrent in their storm, that says all of this is almost finished. There's only one thing left to do. With his right hand, the one that isn't currently throbbing as the stones glimmer, he wraps his fingers around Bucky's wrist and thinks, _Thank god. You're home. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry_.

Then, a breeze blows over his face, like the cool air from inside a dark house, and Bucky clutches him tighter. Steve forces his eyes open (when had he closed them?) and Strange steps from a glowing portal. 

"It's time," he says. "You must come with me now."

Bucky lifts Steve and one of his slippers falls off his foot, left behind in the burning hangar as Bucky carries him through the gold glimmering portal and into the Sanctum Sanctorum. 

### 

Steve dreams.

Tony and Natasha are there, sitting side by side on a white bench under an orange sky. Music is playing, soft horns that carry over softly rippling water. It’s peaceful. 

“Steve,” Natasha says and Steve goes to his knees in the water in front of them, reaching out to both of them at once. They are real and solid under his fingers.

“I’ve missed you,” he chokes as they envelop him with their arms as well. “Oh god, I’ve missed you so much.” When he pulls back, Steve realizes his hands are smooth, unwrinkled and young again. 

Tony grins at him. “Obviously,” he says, “we’ve barely missed you at all, Cap.”

Steve laughs wetly. “Is this it, then?”

“That’s up to you.” Natasha puts her hand on his cheek. “It’s a choice only you can make.”

Steve swallows hard and his eyes brim at the edges. “I tried to bring you back,” Steve tells her. “When I went to Vormir to return the stone, I tried.”

“I know.” Nat’s eyes glimmer and he sees their shared five years shining in them. “I know you did.”

“We’re all here,” Tony says gently. “Whenever you come, we’ll all be waiting for you.”

Steve looks beyond them, toward an orange horizon that he can barely see. It should be strange - but it’s the most beautiful thing that Steve has ever seen. “All of you?” he asks, thinking of Peggy’s hand in his as she slipped away that final time. 

Natasha smiles like she can read his mind. “All of us,” she says. 

### 

Steve opens his eyes and he's lying on a soft bed in a dim room. It's not his bed and not his room, but Bucky is there anyway.

Strange is there too, red cloak flared around his shoulders and arms folded over his chest. Sam is there. Bruce is there. They're arguing, voices rising and falling. Steve can hear the cadence, the anger, but he can't make out the individual words. Buster is huddled against his side. He's not purring but there aren't any tentacles either. The ring is quiet again - but not dormant, like before. He can feel the thrum of urgency, a sense of pressure rising. 

His left arm is on a pillow, propped up and extended. The skin is red and raw, but somehow still intact. The ring is still shimmering, a rainbow bubbling around his fingers. Some sort of cloudy force field surrounds his hand and part of his lower arm. The multicolored waves of light are bouncing off of it, sending prisms onto the white walls. 

It's beautiful.

The colors mingle and surge across one another in some sort of dance. Blue mingles with red until purple swells, yellow darkening and turning orange as it surges over both of them. The green zaps across the center like bits of lightning until the blue bubbles up like a fountain and overwhelms it all, just before flecks of purple and red appear and lengthen like heavy rain. 

"Steve?" 

Steve jerks his attention from the ring and Bucky is right there, leaning over the bed, his soft hand is touching Steve's cheek, turning him away from the stones. 

"You with me?" 

Steve inhales and his lungs feel old and tight, almost at the end of their usefulness. "Buck," he manages, though it's more air than consonants. 

"Yeah, it's me." Bucky turns up his lips in something Steve is sure is supposed to be a smile, but it just looks devastating. “I'm right here. You're safe and it’s…”

“Deville,” Steve gasps, remembering suddenly the attack and Buster and… 

“We got him,” Sam says from just behind Bucky. “He’s in custody along with six other guys. Everything is under control.”

Steve manages a nod. Good. That's good. 

Bucky squeezes his shoulder. “We need to worry about you, huh? Just hang tight. We're gonna get you that serum."

"This is foolish." Strange looms over Bucky's right shoulder. "Commander Rogers, we need to release the binding spell and transfer the ownership of the stones to me. It's the only way."

"It's not," Bucky snaps back. He moves so his body is firmly between Steve's and Strange's. "I won't let you."

"You won't let me? Rogers wants this. He asked me for this."

"Not like this," Bucky says. 

Steve winces. His thoughts are so fuzzy, meandering down paths and cutting off before the end. The ring. The stones. They activated for him and he's dying and...

"Steve," Bruce says. He's crouched on the other side of the bed and the light of the stones glows against his glasses, his green skin warm and soft. "If we undo the spells that bind the stones to you, it's going to destabilize the remaining serum in your body. They’re keeping you alive right now, healing you just enough so your injuries and the serum don't kill you. You'll die almost instantly if we remove them."

"So that's why we're not doing it," Bucky says, raising his voice over Bruce's. 

"But, if they give you this new serum," Strange says, "That will also destabilize the remaining serum in your blood and you will also die - except slowly and in pain with the stones still attached to you and you will doom all of us.”

"He _could_ die," Sam corrects from across the room. "There's a chance."

Strange rolls his eyes. "Yes. There is a small chance that this magical serum from 1942 will be able to stop further degradation and restore him to perfect health. And, also, I think Wong bought a lottery ticket and, surprise, we're all millionaires."

Bucky flinches so hard that Steve feels it in his soul. Against his side, Buster tenses. 

"The point is," Strange continues. "If he dies with the ring still on his finger, we lose the stones, potentially forever, and doom our whole timeline.”

“That might be a risk we need to take,” Sam says. “We don't trade lives.”

“This isn’t the time for platitudes. Our first priority has to be protecting the very fabric of this reality. We should not be taking risks with it.” Strange steps forward and Bucky draws himself up, arm whirring. Buster slinks to his feet, back arched, and Steve lays a hand on his neck. 

_Don't eat Strange, _he thinks, bleary. He can barely process through the waves of pain. 

Sam crosses the room to stand alongside Bucky in two long strides. “Don’t try it,” he says, folding his arms. “You may be a wizard, but there are two of us. And a Hulk.”

Buster hisses.

Bruce’s big hand touches Steve’s shoulder, pulling his attention away from Strange’s glower and the way Buster is now making a low rumbling noise deep in his chest. “It’s a choice only you can make, Steve,” he says, very gently. “We’ll do whatever you want.”

Steve stares at him, hears the echoes of Natasha’s dream words in Bruce’s. He flexes his hand against the ache of power as the colors bloom around the movement. In his soul, there is an answering echo. 

Maybe before, back when Tony had died in front of him and Natasha was gone and Bucky had just stepped from a portal, maybe then Steve would’ve surrendered to the tug. He would’ve closed his eyes and laid himself down and let the sacrifice take him away. 

“Steve,” Bucky whispers and Steve turns his head. The movement hurts. Everything hurts. 

Bucky has sat down on the edge of the bed, grabbing Steve’s left hand firmly in his. His gray eyes are big and wet and Steve can see the reflections of rainbows. “Please,” he says. “Please.”

For a moment, it feels like the entirety of reality pauses. The pain slides away and the world goes quiet. Steve is young and old all at the same time, infinitesimal in the scheme of the universe and also bound to its fate. His lungs expand with air and he hears his own weak heartbeat, chugging resolutely onward. 

There is a rest waiting for him: a warm, safe place with those he loves and misses, free from pain and fear and regret. 

He thinks of that spot under the oaks, where the dawn light spreads every morning, next to Natasha and Tony and New York is ahead. He thinks of an orange horizon and the promise of Peggy somewhere beyond.

Here, there is Bucky and Sam and Bruce and Peter and Wanda. The family he found and rescued and lost and fills him with wonder every single day. 

There is Bucky and the warm spot in his heart that has only grown and deepened with all of the years, something beautiful and unexplored. He could spend centuries learning that feeling. There would be pain and loss - but there would be love. 

He imagines, just for a moment, Bucky alone and hunched under the oaks, over a new grave, with no one to lead him out of the pouring rain.

“I want the serum,” he says at last, the words wheezing and hoarse. “I want to try.”

### 

While Bruce gets ready, Sam herds Strange out of the room, casting a long look at Bucky as he goes. He tries to take Buster out too - but the cat, or whatever it is, hisses and Sam backs off. 

There is so much to be said, Steve thinks. So many decades and, now, there are only a few moments to say everything that Steve has bottled up inside of him. 

Bucky sits on a chair next to him and he looks pale and tired, older than Steve has ever seen him. He has his elbows on his knees and his hands pressed to his mouth and he’s staring at Steve’s hand, at the colors dancing inside the containment.

“Thank you,” Steve says. “For getting the serum.” His voice sounds raspy and unreal in his own ears, like someone else is slowly dying on this bed. 

“I talked to you, back there.” Bucky shifts in the chair, eyes flickering away from the ring and to Steve’s face and back. “When I didn’t get pulled back here right away.”

Steve squints, tries to read the lines around Bucky’s mouth. God. What had he been like at twenty-four? He remembers the jarring shock of his new body - but all of his memories are colored by the decades that came after. What was it like to live without the spectre of Hydra or the Infinity Stones? “I must’ve been so young,” he finally says. 

Bucky smiles, something melancholic in the upward tilt of his lips. “You were. Fresh off of Brooklyn’s alleys. You were so eager.”

Steve turns his hand over: the soft, worn palm of his hand upward and facing Bucky. “I never stopped thinking about you,” he whispers, because this he does remember. “While you were over there. Every recruitment office I went to, I told them my dad was in the 107th so I could just maybe be in your unit. I just wanted to be with you.”

Bucky reaches back and takes his hand. “I told him,” he says. “I told _you_ that after I fall that I survive, to look for me. I don’t know if that will change anything or…” His words choke off, going heavy and wet and he swallows hard. His fingers squeeze Steve’s. When he speaks again, his voice is rough. “So maybe there’s a reality out there where we came home from the war together.”

The thought unfurls before Steve. He closes his eyes. “What would we do?” he asks. 

Bucky shifts closer. “We’d get a house in Brooklyn,” he says, voice faraway like he’s seeing it too. His old accent thickens as the words go on. “Near the park. A place with lots of windows. You’d work for the S.S.R. with Peggy and I’d tinker around with Howard. You’d draw in the evenings and I’d go dancing again.”

Steve lets out a slow breath like he's trying to empty his whole soul into the memory. “A couple of bachelors,” he says. 

“We wouldn’t have to worry about food,” Bucky continues, like he hadn’t heard. “Or heat in the winter or you getting sick or going off to war. We’d have time to be together, without all of,” he waves his free hand. “All of the other stuff.”

What would that have been like, Steve wonders, to live with Bucky in peace and prosperity?

“Maybe,” Bucky’s voice goes soft and lilting, tender like if he says it too loud it’ll all vanish. “Maybe I’ll come home one day and see the way you bend over your sketchbook and the way the light touches your hair…”

He reaches out and touches the side of Steve’s head, stroking the white and gray strands. His thumb brushes the shell of Steve’s ear and, for a split second, all the pain vanishes and there is only a sharp electric current in his belly, just like the first time Peggy kissed him. 

“You’ll look up at me,” Bucky continues. “And you’ll smile and I’ll realize that you’re my whole world.” He closes his eyes, something wet shining briefly on his eyelashes before he dashes it away. 

Steve can see it. He can see Bucky and himself, bright and young. He can see that gentler world where there wouldn’t be bitterness or rage or grief or trauma that filled up all the space between them. Steve would look up as Bucky crossed the room and he’d feel something tug in his chest. Bucky would lean down and…

“Buck,” Steve says. It’s all he can manage. 

It’s enough. They've never really needed words. 

Bucky leans down and cups the sides of Steve’s face with both hands, presses a quick, dry kiss to his wrinkled lips. “I love you,” he says, drawing back only a moment later. “I don’t know when I started but I know it’s not gonna stop. It’s taken me too long to realize and we’ve lost so much time and so you need to stay. You need to fight.”

Steve reaches back and Bucky leans down again. The second kiss is slower, deeper, and Steve only pulls away when he starts to get dizzy. He feels like he’s holding an entire galaxy of stars in his chest. 

“I love you too,” he says. It’s wondrous to say. 

Bucky smiles and it’s brighter than the stones, the brightest thing that Steve has seen in his entire long life. “You’ll stay?” he asks. “You won’t leave?”

Steve doesn't think he can make that promise: he feels how his heart beats, weak and slow, and how his lungs stutter with each breath. In that moment, though, it seems possible and he thinks of Natasha, smiling at him under an orange sky. 

_It’s your choice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow: the conclusion. Thank you so much for all coming along on this ride!!!!


	11. 2028

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2028, Steve gets the serum for the second time.

### 2028

The second time Steve gets the serum is nothing like the first time.

The first time had been bright white pain, agony that spooled from his bloodstream and into every nerve ending. It was sharp and fast and it stole the air from his lungs, cresting like a wave over his head. Then, just seconds later, it was done. The same way the pain peaked, it also drained away. The absence of agony was almost disorientating and he staggered from the machine, feeling perfectly healthy and whole for the first time in his life. 

The second time, a whole lifetime later, the pain is a slow, creeping simmer beneath his skin. There’s no relief and no end in sight. It presses into every part of his body and fills him up to the brim until all he knows is a freezing, unbearable ache.

Ten minutes after Bruce sets up the machine to filter Steve’s blood and infuse it with the new serum, Steve starts shaking so hard his teeth chatter. Dark spots crowd across his vision until all he can see is dim rainbow light, still flickering around his hand. 

_I’m staying_, he tells the sick, oily feeling surging through his veins. _You can’t have me._

It feels like the ice, like the plane: he's plunging down and down into a great darkness and he is so cold that he can never imagine being warm again. He stares up at the white ceiling and lets the shivers rock him like the waves. 

Bucky covers him with thicker blankets and, when that fails, lies down next to Steve and wraps his arms around his shoulders, holds Steve to his chest so Steve can hear his heartbeat. “I got you,” he says in Steve’s ear, firm. “You hear me? I got you. I’m right here.”

Time stretches, bending around the pain and making it stretch out, on and on. The ache swamps over him like water and everything seems so far away. Sometimes Sam is there, touching his forehead or his shoulder. Sometimes Bruce is there, checking over the containment field holding the power of the ring. Strange comes and goes, face drawn and lined with the weight of the whole universe. He can feel the soft fur of Buster under his hand, trembling a little. 

Once, instead of a dim room, Steve sees the orange sky and the quiet, rippling lake. His footsteps make no noise in the water. There is a warm breeze that smoothes away the pain. All he can hear is wind over the soft waves and, just for a moment, he thinks how easy it would be to stay here, to rest… He comes back to Bucky’s hand on his chin, pulling his mouth open. 

“Breathe, Steve,” he’s saying, harsh and scared. “Breathe.”

Steve gasps and chokes and his lungs burn. The cold is a living agony in his chest and he has to struggle for each inhale, force himself to not just give up and stop. He should call Strange, let the spells be undone. It would be so much easier. 

“There you go,” Bucky says. His voice sounds thick and nasally. Is he crying? He pulls Steve up against his chest, holding him there with all the blankets and rocking him like he’s a child. “There you go. In and out. Just breathe. Keep breathing.”

Steve sobs, harsh and painful, and manages to get one hand around Bucky’s wrist. Maybe all of this is a mistake. Maybe he should’ve given up the ring. Maybe he should’ve just let go long ago and gone to Peg. Bucky doesn’t need him. Strange will be right outside the door, he could call him in here. What good is he? Just an old man who is weak and dying and useless and… 

“It’s almost over,” Bucky croons. “Almost done. You’re so close. So close, Steve.”

Steve opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling, half blind. Sweat is in his eyes even as the shivering continues and there's an awful whimpering noise that Steve knows is coming from his own mouth. He can't see the rainbows anymore and he doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

“We may want to think about calling Strange,” Bruce says quietly from somewhere that Steve cannot see. 

“No,” Bucky snaps. “Not yet. He promised.”

Sam swims across the ceiling and he looks so, so sad. His hand settles on Steve’s forehead, gentle like a benediction. He stares down for a long moment, searching Steve’s face. “Bucky,” he says at last, ragged. “He's suffering. If…”

Bucky inhales, sharp and like he's in pain. “Not yet,” he grinds out. “He's never given up. Never. We can give him more pain meds.”

“Bucky,” Bruce says and he sounds closer. “If we give him anymore, he could stop breathing. We can't compromise his lungs anymore. We may have to face reality here.”

Bucky makes a wet noise. He's trembling, Steve realizes, a counterpoint to Steve’s own shaking. “Not yet, Bruce. He said he wanted to fight.”

His eyes are stinging and Steve blinks hard, trying to clear his vision. What has he ever done to earn that kind of faith? Steve makes his fingers squeeze tighter on Bucky’s wrist. 

“Steve?” Bucky asks, leaning close. His forehead is furrowed and his eyes are bright. “I'm here. You're safe. Just save your strength.”

Steve shakes his head a little and licks his lips, trying to get enough moisture in his mouth to speak. “I c’n d’ ‘is all ‘ay,” he slurs. Warmth squashes the pain for a moment when Bucky chuckles wetly. 

“What did he say?” Sam asks. 

“He can do this all day,” Bucky translates and presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead, fingers sliding down so they're holding hands. “I know you can. You got it on the ropes.”

Steve smiles and draws an entire full breath into his lungs, lets the pain flow through him rather than fighting against it. He can feel unconsciousness tugging him back down and he slides into it with Bucky’s arms still holding him tight. 

The sunlight is what makes Steve finally wake up from confused and clouded dreams. There’s a warm stripe falling across his bare shoulders and his face and, when he opens his eyes, he has to squint against the sudden flare of brightness from the half-open curtains. 

The pain is still there, though not as bad as it was before. He can feel it racing along over his muscles, crackling up his nerve endings. His stomach is sour and his head is pounding. 

He’s in his bedroom: he knows that immediately from the smooth cotton sheets and the slightly flat pillow beneath his head. He can smell his own laundry detergent and hear the rush of the river. Next to him, on a chair beside the bed, head tipped back so Steve can see that his beard is growing much further than usual down the sides of his neck, is Bucky. 

Bucky is snoring softly, once every couple inhales. He has the burgundy cashmere throw draped over him, like someone laid it across him after he fell asleep. His mouth is a little open and there are shadows the size of thumbprints beneath his eyes. It sends Steve years back, to right after the Central Park Riot and then back further to the war and Brooklyn and all the dozens of times Steve opened his eyes to Bucky sleeping next to him. 

“Hey. You're awake.” Sam’s standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. His gray sweatshirt is rumpled and his feet are bare beneath long black sweatpants. “He passed out about an hour ago. Strange helped us move you back here when we were sure you weren't going to die on us in the middle of the night.”

His throat is raw and Steve swallows hard a couple times. “It worked?” he asks, voice raspier than even he had expected. Both of his arms are tucked under the blankets and he can’t see the ring - but there are no more rainbows glowing underneath his skin. 

Sam crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed. There’s a glass of water with a straw in it on the bedside table and he picks it up, brings it over to Steve’s mouth. “It was touch and go,” he says as Steve gulps. “The attack was two days ago and it got pretty dicey there. I think Strange might’ve popped at least three blood vessels. But, the serum started working a few hours ago. Finally. When the stones stopped reacting to the remnants of the old timeline in your blood, they settled back down too.”

The water is lukewarm but it’s the best thing Steve’s ever tasted. He swallows hard and leans back when the glass is empty. “Thank you.”

Sam nods. He puts the glass back on the table and leans forward. “You should've told us about the stones. They did a number on you, Steve,” he says quietly. “Bruce says that’s what started making you decline so fast. As they started gaining strength, they reacted with the serum in your blood more and more. You would’ve been dead in weeks if Bucky hadn’t gone back.”

Steve looks over at Bucky, at the lines of tension still in his face. “He’s always saving me.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “He is. You’re gonna have to be gentle with him for awhile. It got real close and he didn't handle it too well. Take it easy for awhile, listen to Bruce and the doctors. The serum is working again but it's gonna be slow. You're not gonna just jump out of this bed tomorrow.”

He's right. Steve can feel the low-banked fire of pain in all of his bones as the damage is repaired, inch by painful inch. Slowly, he takes a deep breath and releases it. “I can do it,” he says. 

Sam smiles. “That sounds like the Steve Rogers I know.”

By the time Bucky wakes up with an inelegant snort, Steve is propped up against the pillows and trying to read a book that Sam brought in from his shelves. His damaged hand and arm are completely wrapped in thick, white bandages and secured in a sling against his chest. Faint rust is already seeping through some of the bandages where the wounds are the worst. The ring is hidden somewhere beneath the thick wrappings.

"Hey! Hey." Bucky scrubs at his face with both hands and then leans forward. “You’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Steve smiles at him and lays his book face down in his lap. "Better," he says and then makes a face because the instinctive urge to sugar coat his physical hurts from Bucky isn't going to be helpful. "Well, not like I'm dying anymore at least."

Bucky is staring at him, face twisted oddly. "You look younger," he says, hesitant. "Bruce said it was possible the serum would make you look young again but... it's weird."

Steve touches his own face. It feels… firmer? It had been worn and wrinkly, soft like an old T-shirt. Now, he can still find the familiar grooves, but they are shallower and the skin springs back when he presses it rather than just sagging down. "Huh," is all he manages. His hand is trembling and he squeezes it into a fist, pressing it against his thigh. 

Bucky is still staring at him. “Bruce said he'd come to us, later today when you've had a chance to rest a little. The serum has stopped poisoning you, at least, but Bruce isn’t sure if it’s going to fully recover." 

Steve inhales shakily. “If it does, I guess I’ll be a super soldier again," he says, with no excitement. It's not that he doesn't want to be strong again, protect Bucky and Sam and everyone else. Being a super soldier, though, always came hand-in-hand with being_ Captain America._

Steve hasn't wanted to be Captain America for a very, very long time. 

Bucky must read some of that in his face because his nod is somber. "You're going to be healthy," he says. "I won't have to worry about you dying on me. We can go to the Grand Canyon. What else it does, we don’t know yet. It might not..." he trails off and then stands up. "Bruce said you should eat something. Your body needs fuel. I think you had some vegetable stew in the freezer."

Steve lays back on the pillows as Bucky leaves. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply through the pain, squeezing his hands so that the wrinkled skin goes white and taut. It'll be okay. He’s going to live. Whatever else happens, they’ll cross that bridge later.

He hears a soft meow from near his feet and opens his eyes. Buster is there, tucked small on his belly at the very end of the bed, huge green eyes blinking at Steve. He looks unsure, Steve thinks, tentative in a way that Steve has never associated with his proud, benevolent cat. 

"Hey," Steve says softly and holds out his undamaged hand. 

Buster slinks toward him, staying as low as he can. When he's close enough, the cat fits his head under Steve's palm, rubbing up into it and purring loudly. His rough tongue swipes at the underside of Steve's wrist. 

"You did good," Steve tells him. "You can have my back in a fight anytime." 

Buster rumbles and slides up into Steve's lap, circling round and round until he settles, curled into a ball with his chin on Steve's knee. He closes his eyes and sighs. 

Steve strokes his neck, follows his spine all the way down to his tail with the tips of his fingers. The white and charcoal fur is soft and smooth as always. ”I know you're not a cat," he says, gently. When Buster shivers a little under his fingers at the words, he scratches under his chin. "This is still your home, pal. You can stay here as long as you want. You always have a place here."

Buster turns his head and squints at him, bright green eyes fixed on Steve before rubbing the side of his face along Steve’s hand. _You’re stuck with me,_ he seems to say.

Bucky comes back in and sets the tray on the side table. He stands for a moment, looking down at the soup like there’s something wrong with it, and then sits down on the edge of the bed. He reaches out and takes Steve’s good hand and holds it. 

He's quiet for a long moment, staring down at where their fingers are intertwined. The dim early evening light is pale through the window, long shadows stretching from the trees toward the river. 

Bucky’s throat moves as he swallows, jaw clenching in that familiar expression of earnest determination. When he looks up, his eyes are damp, full to the brim. “I know there’s going to be a lot of clean up to do. But, I want you to know that no matter what happens with the serum, you’re retired and we, Sam and I, we’ll respect that. Whatever happens, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Steve swallows hard. “Thank you,” he says. 

Bucky nods and then leans a little closer. He’s not finished. “No matter what you decide,” he continues. “I want you to know that I'm in this. Us. I’m committed. Whatever that means. I’m not running from you again and if you ever take off on me, I'm chasing you down, across time and space and the whole goddamn universe. I’m handcuffing us together so if you jump off of anything, we’re going down together.” There’s something defiant in his tone, like he just wants Steve to try just so he can prove it. 

Steve smiles, helplessly. “Glad we’re on the same page then.”

Bucky’s face breaks into a soft smile, beautiful and hopeful and infinitely tender. “Can I kiss you?” he says, sounding a little breathless.

Steve nods and Bucky scoots over, shifting so he can fully lean over Steve.

Gently, Bucky reaches up and cups his face. He pauses there, for a moment, just staring at Steve deeply, like all the secrets to the universe are somewhere inside of him.

Steve lifts his good hand and grips Bucky’s wrist, feeling the smooth metal. Bucky’s eyes are a little damp and his lips are a little chapped. He takes Steve’s breath away, like he always has.

When Bucky kisses him, it’s soft and slow and Steve feels it all the way down to his toes. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to savor this moment, press it deep into this memory like a prayer. Something inside slots deep into place and Steve knows that everything will be okay.

Sam comes to visit five days after the attack, ostensibly to give a status update to Steve rather than to just check up on him.

Six men had been taken into custody during the attack on the compound. Deville has been found, half conscious and mumbling about cats, on the ground behind the hangar. Two men were killed. Another ten from the nearby area were rounded up and arrested as co-conspirators - two of them were FBI agents. One of them was a security guard who had been hired by the Avengers six months prior. He’d been a plant and had given the security codes to Deville and the others. The attack had been planned for weeks - it was just bad luck they chose to do it on the day the quantum tunnel was in use. 

“We’ve managed to contain that part of the story,” Sam says. “And the bit about the,” he makes a snapping motion, even though Steve had never actually snapped his fingers. “Thankfully, the feds are more interested in the actual attack and covering their own asses than what we were doing. I’m pretty sure use of the quantum tunnel or the Infinity Stones without prior disclosure is a violation of those fancy new Accords you helped write.”

Steve shrugs. No law was ever perfect.

From the window in his bedroom, he can see the yellow police tape and the news vans and the dark suited men and women from three letter agencies as they scour the lawn of the Avengers compound. What they're looking for, he's not entirely sure. Buster is wedged against him, sleeping soundly like all of the excitement is no big deal.

“We’re telling people you have pneumonia,” Bucky says, carrying in a mug of tea and a bowl of soup on a tray. “You may eventually have to give a statement but the official record says you were in bed asleep when everything went down.” His expression says _like you should've been_.

He puts the tray down across Steve’s lap and tugs at the pillows behind Steve’s back, helping him sit more upright. “They won't bother you,” he says firmly and it makes Steve wonder how many people have already been intimidated away from his front door by Bucky’s metal arm and scowl.

Steve thinks he would protest the coddling if he wasn't so exhausted. He can barely hold the spoon in between the muscle spasms and the never ending pain as his nervous system repairs itself. He only manages half the mug of tea and a third of the soup before he has to rest.

Bucky stays next to him, hand on his leg, as he speaks to Sam in a low voice about contingency plans and arrest warrants and press conferences.

Steve falls asleep to their murmurs and wakens, hours later, to a dim room. Bucky is sitting next to the bed, bent over his laptop. The only light in the room is from in his screen and Bucky looks worn thin in the faint blue light.

“Buck,” Steve murmurs, still half asleep. There's pain on the edge of his attention, but it's just a low throb. If he falls asleep again quickly, he’ll be able to ignore it.

Bucky looks up, scrubs his palm over his eyes. “Yeah, I’m here, pal. You want some dinner? You slept through it but I can warm up something.”

Steve moves slowly, conscious of the pain in his muscles. He extends his uninjured hand from the blankets and holds it toward Bucky. “C’mere,” he says.

Bucky closes the laptop and sets it on the side table. He's just in sweatpants and a T-shirt and he smells like soap as he slides under the covers. “Is this okay?” he asks, wrapping his arms around Steve’s shoulders. “I'm not hurting you?”

Steve rests his head against Bucky’s chest. “Couldn't hurt me,” he says and falls back asleep.

Recovery is not linear. It's slow and meandering and familiar to Steve from the long weeks of his youth, how he’d missed whole semesters at school because of one bout with the flu.

His muscles and bones ache almost constantly. Bruce calls them growing pains. Steve calls them hell. It’s especially bad during the first two weeks and Steve spends most of it in bed, wracked with cramps and spasms. Drugs don’t work, not with his metabolism suddenly burning at top speed again. Warm baths do help and Steve spends enough time in the water that he thinks he might be more wrinkly than ever.

An official congressional inquiry is announced three weeks after the attack and Sam comes over to watch the official press conference with them. Its chief purpose is to investigate any links between the FBI and the UD.

Steve is in his easy chair when Sam arrives, with Buster in his lap. He watches from his chair as Sam sheds his thick coat and toes off his boots. It's warm in the room, thermostat cranked up. He's still bundled up in a thick comforter, though, with a sweatshirt and socks on underneath the blanket.

It had been a bad night and he can still feel little tremors up and down his legs. Bucky has tucked in pillows on either side of him in the chair, cushioning his tender bones. He feels frail and sick.

His appetite has been coming back slower than his metabolism and he's been losing weight rapidly. His face looks gaunt and hollow in the bathroom mirror and all of his clothes are baggy. Bucky hates it. He looks up all of Steve’s favorite recipes and makes all of them, trying to tempt him into eating. It’s only partially successful. His whole body feels narrow and pinched, constantly cold as his metabolism rapidly burns up whatever reserves he had.

There's a tray of half eaten French toast on the side table and Bucky keeps looking in its direction from his spot in the other chair, like he can will Steve into taking another few bites.

“About damn time,” Sam snaps from the couch as the press conference gets going. “Where’ve they been for the last five years, huh? All of this was an open secret and now they’re all jumping to pretend they’ve been on the right side of this the whole time.” He shakes head.

The Speaker of the House is the one who announces in the inquiry, alongside a newly appointed Special Prosecutor. The prosecutor is a tall woman with a kind face and when she steps up to the podium to give her statement, she begins with, “As someone who lost five years of her life…”

Bucky gets up abruptly and goes to the kitchen. Steve can see the corner of his shoulder as he bends over the sink, head bowed so his hair falls over his face. After a long moment, Bucky’s back loosens and he lifts his head, gazing out at blue sky and the river. Steve can just glimpse the tiny shine of tears at the edges of his eyelashes. He's smiling.

Steve tips his head back and feels tears sting his own eyes as well. He can almost taste the change in the wind. The timeline finally coming back into alignment five years after the Decimation.

The world is finally ready to move forward as one.

He cards his fingers through the soft fur at Buster’s neck. “You did good, pal,” he tells the cat quietly, remembering how Deville had tumbled through the air, laying dazed and insensate until Avengers security had handcuffed him.

Buster cracks one eye and then yawns. He knows.

That night is another bad one. The pain won't let him sleep and he can't do anything but shake.

When nothing helps, Bucky carries him out to the front porch, wrapping him in blankets so they can sit together on the swing. Buster follows them out and sits at the edge of the porch, staring out at where the moonlight gleams on the river.

“It’s like when I had scarlet fever that one winter,” he tells Bucky, squeezing his fingers together to keep from screaming.

“I remember that,” Bucky says quietly. “You got so skinny I thought I’d break you if I breathed wrong.”

Steve nods and lays his head on Bucky’s chest. Decades later and he can still remember the horrible sensation of his body giving up on him. Bucky strokes his gray hair and he exhales slowly. “This time, though,” he says quietly into the cool night air. “This time, I know I’m getting better.”

Bucky hums and kisses his forehead. “You know when I really fell in love with you?” he asks. 

Steve shakes his head. 

“When I came home from that mission, in the middle of the night. There had been kids…” he swallows and shakes his head. “All I could think about, when we landed, was seeing you. I ran all the way from the quinjet, soon as we touched down. I didn’t realize how late it was until I woke you up. You didn’t say anything, though. You came out and sat with me and you stroked my hair.” His voice goes rough and Steve rubs his knee. 

“I’d loved you my whole life but having you be that steady place; that place I could come home to. I’d been trying to make my own home for so long and to have you make it for me… You were talking about how brave I was and I realized that I didn’t want to be without you. Not ever. You were safety and peace and I finally knew I could stop looking for a home. You were home.” Bucky shudders. “It took me a little longer to work out what exactly all those feelings meant - but I know that was the moment.”

Steve turns his head and presses a kiss to the place right over Bucky’s heart. “I'm gonna get better,” he tells Bucky. “We’re gonna have a whole long life together. I promise.”

Bucky kisses the top of his head. “I'm counting on it.”

The next morning, they go on a walk.

“I have to get out of this house,” Steve says. “I'm going crazy.”

“You're not strong enough,” Bucky argues. “You can barely get from the bed to the couch without losing your breath.”

They compromise.

Bucky borrows a wheelchair from the infirmary and pushes Steve down the paved walkways. Buster rides in Steve’s lap like this entire endeavor is just for him. The snow has melted away completely but the air is still brisk and Bucky insists that Steve wear a hat and mittens and a coat. 

“I look ridiculous,” Steve complains, picking at the familiar cashmere blanket Bucky has draped over his legs.

“But you are warm,” Bucky counters and Steve can’t argue with that. 

They go to the memorials and Bucky sits on the bench while Steve stares down at the two familiar stones and at the three oaks. It'll be a long time, he thinks, before he joins them here.

As the morning mist starts to burn off the river, he nods to himself and turns to Bucky.

The other man is watching him, quiet and so understanding. Steve squirms at the sensation of being so known.

“Did I hurt you,” Steve asks, unsure if he wants to know the answer, “when I went back to Peggy?”

Bucky makes a quiet noise, shifting on the bench, his mouth going tight. He doesn’t speak and his eyes stay on the fast moving river.

Steve sits in silence. He wants the truth. If he is going to love Bucky how he deserves to be loved, this can’t live between them.

“I wasn’t in love with you then,” Bucky says at last. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

It’s not, and Steve knows Bucky knows that too.

Bucky sighs and bites at his thumbnail. He rubs his hands up and down his jeans and when he speaks again, his words are soft and slow. “When you came back and I saw you’d had a whole life with her, I was happy for you. Of course, I was, but I’m only human, Steve.” He sighs and his mouth quirks in a half smile. “Maybe I was a little in love with you.”

“Buck...” Steve says and he wants to slide over to the bench, to wrap his arms around Bucky.

“No. Let me get all this out.” Bucky inhales and plants his hands on either side of himself. “It wasn’t much different for me,” he says at last. “You’d spent all the time since... since Hydra going places I couldn’t follow, not if I wanted to protect myself. I couldn’t be an Avenger. I couldn’t be an outlaw. It’s not your fault. That’s how you were built. So when I came back and you were set to go off on another mission, I just nodded my head and hoped you come back to me. You were wild horses and I couldn’t even think about being in love with you because loving you like that would’ve killed me.

“When you came back and it was clear you’d had a whole life, this life where you settled down and got married and stayed in one place for one goddamn second,” Bucky smiles here, fond. “I was jealous that someone else had finally gotten that out of you. I was jealous it wasn’t me.”

Steve swallows and is glad he can tuck his hands beneath the blanket so Bucky can’t see them tremble. He wants to say so much: how Bucky had always been his best friend and he’d always wanted to be with him, no matter what. But, Bucky is right: Steve hadn’t been able to just breathe in this century.

Could he have gotten there without going back to Peggy? Back in 1946, when he walked into her arms, he’d been frenetic for the first few years. His whole study had been covered with diagrams and charts. He’d been so determined to fix the whole world: that timeline and the one he’d left behind. It had taken decades and Peggy’s gentle pressure and Bucky’s quiet resilience for Steve to finally settle into the idea that he couldn’t single-handedly fix the universe.

So, maybe he could’ve done it here. But, Steve knows all the way down deep in his soul, he would not be sitting here with Bucky if he had stayed - not in just five short years, at least.

Bucky is watching him now, like he knows what Steve is thinking. “I would’ve gone back to Wakanda after,” he says evenly. “You and Sam would’ve had each other. You wouldn’t have needed me.”

“That’s not true,” Steve says and Bucky reaches over and takes his hand, twining their fingers together.

“I would’ve thought it, though. Maybe I would’ve come back by now. Maybe not. Maybe I would’ve married into one of the border tribes and you would’ve officiated the wedding.”

Steve laughs and is surprised by how wet his throat is. “I would’ve come to visit you.”

Bucky hmms. “When you came back, and I realized you needed me and Sam needed me, I stayed. I was so jealous of Peggy, of all that life they got to have with you, and I figured I’d never get that, not even after you came back. But, then you stayed.”

Steve remembers that day in the trailer, how Bucky had looked at him over a cup of coffee. _Glad to have you, old man._ “I stayed.”

“You built this home. You got a cat. You let Sam be Captain America. You compromised. You talked about your feelings.” Bucky shakes his head and Steve thinks he has the same expression he did when he looked out over the Grand Canyon: wonderment. “And, suddenly, I was falling in love with this old geezer in a too-big sweater who liked cats and tea. It was very confusing.”

Steve squeezes Bucky’s fingers.

“But, you were Steve,” Bucky says after a moment. “So I fell in love. Then, somehow I was lucky enough to have you love me back.”

“I’m the lucky one.” Steve’s eyes feel damp and he closes them for a second. He wants to see this, remember Bucky’s face in this moment.

When he opens his eyes, Bucky has leaned close. He rests his forehead against Steve’s and breathes quietly.

“We have to promise,” Bucky says, soft like they’re on hallowed ground, “that we will never leave each other behind, that we will always, always come home.”

Steve nods. “I promise,” he vows. He leans forward the rest of the way and kisses Bucky. “Always.”

Bucky is smiling when he pulls back and he wraps his hands around Steve’s, resting them on the blanket in Steve’s lap. Together, they watch the river and how the whole world comes alive as the day warms. They watch the sun rise high in the sky and the boats from the city start to chug up the river. When it gets closer to lunch, Bucky lifts their hands and presses a kiss to Steve’s knuckles.

“You ready?” Bucky asks.

Steve nods and smiles. “Let’s go home.”

In April, Deville is arraigned on a series of charges in federal court in Manhattan. Steve is too weak to go - but Bucky and Sam head over to the city for the day to sit in the courtroom. They come home, both in nice suits and looking exhausted.

“He’s a piece of shit,” Sam says. “Used his entire statement to talk about the superiority of everyone who Remained. Except you, of course,” he says to Steve. "He hates you."

Bucky flops down on his chair, slumped so only his shoulders and head are upright. Buster walks up his stomach and nuzzles at his forehead. “The good news is, with the amount of charges he’s got, he should be locked away for a long, long time. Maybe that means the rest of the UD dies down a little.” He looks hopeful about that for the first time in years.

“You look good by the way,” Sam says as they eat dinner. “What are you now… like sixty, sixty-five?”

Steve ducks his head at Sam’s inquiry. Back in the other timeline, the aging had been accelerated once the serum began failing. He'd been able to see the subtle changes from day to day: how his skin had softened and loosened around his bones, wrinkles starting as crows feet and then turning to folds of skin and craggy lines. He'd seen the blond of his hair fade to silver and then spots of pure white. His shoulders had narrowed and slumped. 

Now, it’s happening in reverse. The deeper wrinkles around his face have begun to smooth out. His back is straighter and his muscles tighter. His hair has thickened out, still silver but soft and full across his head. 

“Don’t worry,” Steve tells him. “Bruce tells me you’ll still be able to recognize me by the time it’s done. The serum is much weaker than it was before.”

“What about your arm?” Sam asks, pointing with his chin toward the limb.

Steve looks down at it. The bandages came off that morning and he’s just wearing a simple sling to support it. The arm is splotchy and thin, crinkled and odd-looking. Thin, pink and red scars lattice his skin like a spider-web, stretching from his ring finger all the way up to his shoulder. When Steve flexes his hand, there’s only a small, lingering pain.

“Is it hurting you?” Bucky asks from his other side. His face is crinkled and Steve wants to press a kiss to deep furrow in his forehead.

He reaches over and takes Bucky’s hand with his good one. “It’s fine. Much better than it was. Bruce says I should have full range of movement, though it might take awhile. He thinks the scars are there to stay though.”

It’s a small price to pay, Steve thinks, for saving Bucky.

Five years, one month, and six days after Thanos attacked the compound, Bucky comes in with a lamp in one hand and a shoe rack in the other.

“This is it,” he announces and Steve looks up from his book.

He’s on the couch, propped up against one of the armrests with his legs stretched out across the cushions. The cashmere knit throw is spread across his knees and Buster is laying on the back of the couch next to him. Today, the pain is just a low simmer, a good day. He’s been having more and more of them lately. “What’s it?”

Bucky waves the lamp, cord waggling around his legs. “The last of my stuff. I’m officially moved out of my room at the barracks. With the UD stuff dying down, I don’t need to be as close to the launch bay and I think Sam is going to turn it into an office for himself. I’m living here now.”

Steve smiles so hard his face hurts. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re gonna get sick of me in no time.” Bucky puts both items down on the floor by the bookshelves and crosses the room, sitting on the side of the couch. He kisses Steve, short and sweet. “God, look at you,” he says and then laughs, rubbing his thumb along the underside of Steve’s eye. “We’re gonna be the same age soon.”

Steve smiles. That’s unlikely. The changes have slowed so much that Bruce suspects his cells will stabilize within days. His hair is still silver, his skin still bears the wrinkles an age spots of decades. Most people would peg him as late fifties or early sixties. Steve thinks he is more than okay with it.

In the other timeline, he had mostly skipped this age, in terms of appearance. He’d lingered around his early forties for decades and then was in his seventies within months as the serum finally started to succumb to the pressures of the alternate resonance. He'd never gotten to live like this: aged but strong. Steve likes this age, he’s decided. When he looks in the mirror, the deep lines and the silver hair and the broad, strong shoulders match what he feels inside. For the first time in a long time - maybe since 1944, Steve finally feels as old as he looks. It’s almost novel.

Steve reaches up and holds Bucky’s face, studies the crinkle lines around his eyes and the bit of gray in his beard. Against Bucky’s cheeks, his hands are a little weathered, but not gnarled and trembling. “We both can be old men. For a good long time. For the rest of our lives. God.” He leans forward and kisses Bucky again. “We should’ve been doing this ages ago.”

“No,” Bucky says and his gaze is so soft that something in Steve’s heart turns over. “I think now is perfect.”

And it is.

In early October, Steve puts his dark suit back on for the first time since he testified before congress and he and Bucky drive into Washington D.C. on a clear, crisp day.

"How are the votes looking?" Bucky asks as they pull off the interstate and Steve looks up from where he's been worrying over his phone.

"It's not done until it's done," he says but he smiles at the side of Bucky's head. Everything looks good. Public opinion polling is strongly in favor of the "Returned Reunification and Recovery" package and it passed the House vote with flying colors. All that's left now is the Senate. He reaches over and takes Bucky's hand, where it's lying between them on the console.

Bucky squeezes his fingers right back, gentle so he's not irritating the pink and red scars lacing the skin. "I'm proud of you, Steve," he says.

Steve's chest warms and he ducks his head a little, rubbing a hand over his chin. Five years have gone by since he'd sat alone in that little trailer out by the river, heart broken over that first bill failing. It feels like it has been decades since then and also no time at all. He'd never imagined in that moment that the future could be filled with so much love and hope and joy.

Back then, Steve had believed the best years of his life had been behind him. He'd seen his remaining years as quiet, lonely ones: guarding the stones as they matured, rebuilding the parts of the world that let him, lingering on the edges of Bucky's life to provide whatever support he could. How times have changed.

"Think people will recognize me with the beard?" he asks. It's not much yet - but he'd noticed it sprouting just a few weeks ago, a soft, dark silver. It's not as thick as it was when he was 30, but it's full and silky and Steve loves it.

Bucky has been teasing him about vanity - but Steve has seen the way his gaze lingers on it too.

"Probably not," Bucky says. "You'll get to surprise them all over again. Steve Rogers: the man of many faces."

"As long as you always know who I am," Steve says. "That's what matters."

Bucky's eyes go soft and sweet, cheeks going the slightest bit pink. "I'll always know who you are, Steve."

The chambers of the senate are crowded and the congressional aide that escorts them to their seats seems overwhelmed.

"There's just so many people," she tells Bucky, clutching her tablet between both hands. "I haven't seen this many people here in a long time. Not since before..." She trails off and ducks her head. Then, she lifts it again and looks right at Steve. "You brought my dad and younger sister back, sir. She's eight now. Thank you."

Steve nods.

"And thank you for this," she gestures around to the crowded chamber, the senators already gathering on the floor. "My dad finally got a job last month and a place to live. He'd been living out in Central Park with my sister and now they have an apartment and my sister is back in school." Her voice gets thick and she stops, blinking her eyes as her eyeliner starts to smudge just the tiniest bit.

Steve takes her hand. "It wasn't me," he tells her. "It was everyone. It was people like you who made the decision that we could be better."

The bill passes. Steve is on his feet when it hits the majority number, Bucky at his elbow. He can hear people around him cheering, but he's just smiling. He can feel Nat and Tony, he thinks. They're proud. They're happy.

"You did it," Bucky says, and kisses him, sweet and quick, before wrapping his arm around Steve's waist and pulling him close.

Steve holds him close and looks down at the floor, where there are senators celebrating too. This isn't the end. There's still rebuilding left to be done, but Steve knows it's just a matter of time now. They've won the war.

The Decimation is over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Alby, who asked for a "I can do this all day" scene. 
> 
> The epilogue (2030) will arrive in a few hours as we finalize the last details of posting!


	12. 2030

### 2030

Two years after Steve almost dies in the Sanctum Sanctorum, they throw Steve’s 112th birthday party in the compound’s giant hangar, the same place where Bucky had gone into the past and Steve had pulled him out. Sam and Peter and Scott hung streamers and balloons from the ceiling and there is a giant cake with 112 candles on it. Tony would be proud of the extent of the festivities.

Technically speaking, it’s a surprise birthday party - but Steve isn’t one of the best tacticians of the 21st century (per the _TIME_ Magazine Person of the Year 2029 article, thank you very much) for nothing. Also, Bucky couldn’t keep a secret from Steve to save his life.

Still, Steve thinks Natasha would have appreciated the surprised expression he plasters on his face when the overhead lights flood on with a snap as he and Bucky just happen to venture by the hangar on the way home from the quiet birthday dinner they’d had in the city.

Outside, firework shows are winding down and Steve can feel the warm glow of friends and food and love as he sits in a folding chair near the front of the room. Buster is roaming the entire space, begging scraps from anyone who looks compassionate. Steve has stationed himself near the cake, just in case Buster tries to go for that. Though, honestly, he’s not sure if he could stop Buster if the cat really wanted it.

Someone took his cover of Times magazine and blew it up to almost life-size, hanging it over the table laden with the cake and presents. It’s mostly the upper half of his body, his face turned slightly to the side. His left hand, with the ring and the scars, is carefully out of sight behind his back. “The Man behind the Myth” the headline reads and it makes Steve flush all over again, seeing it. Bucky has at least four copies stashed on their bookshelf.

“Something to keep me company on lonely nights,” he told Steve. “I can always take this out and…”

Steve turns even redder remembering the gesture Bucky made with his hand. He’s still not used to how Bucky loves him, finds him desirable, even though he’s not thirty-five anymore.

Ultimately, the serum has healed him - but it could only do so much. Bruce said that maybe if they had used vita-rays, maybe if they’d had more serum, or maybe if the Infinity Stones hadn’t done so much damage, then Steve would look thirty-five all over again. _Maybe. _Steve is healthy and strong - but he is still an old man, if younger than he was before.

His hair has darkened back to grayish blond and the deep grooves around his mouth have smoothed only a little. The skin around his eyes still crinkles in a hundred tiny lines and his knuckles still show the decades of punching bags in their deep furrows. 

The scars on his arm have darkened to an almost silver with time, spreading over his hand and wrist and stretching all the way up to his shoulder like a hundred tiny streams, branching off and wrapping around his bones. Steve thinks there’s almost something beautiful about the scars, like molten metal had run in rivulets down his arm. Bucky sometimes traces the little lines when they lay in bed together, following them from the ring across the sensitive skin of Steve’s inner arm. He presses his little kisses to the deep ones. “They’re proof you lived,” he says to Steve’s palm.

Steve’s true delight, though, is that his beard has filled in completely: it’s a dark silvery blond that he keeps neatly trimmed - but it’s just as thick and soft as the one he grew when he was just 30 years old.

Steve is fortunate. There’s no slouch to his back, his hands no longer tremble, and his bones don’t ache in the rain. Still, he’s not Captain America and he will never be that again. Steve is perfectly comfortable with that. He works at the compound, he advises Sam and Maria, and he spends long, quiet evenings with Bucky and his cat. He has a home, he has purpose, and he has love.

Not to mention, Bucky _adores_ the beard.

The last year and a half have brought him a peace and happiness that he thought he’d never have again, not after Peggy had died. He loves and is loved. Sometimes, Steve thinks he’s the luckiest man across every timeline, in the entire universe. 

Sam flops down into the chair next to him. “Enjoying your party, old man?” he asks. His eyes are bright and he’s smiling so that his eyes almost crinkle up completely. “Your boy’s been on all of us for weeks planning it.”

Steve scans the hangar and finds Bucky, deep in conversation with Peter and Wanda. He’s unbuttoned the top two buttons on his dress shirt and has a glass of champagne in one hand. At the edge of his collar, Steve’s enhanced eyes can just pick out the shadow of a purple, circular bruise. He smiles fondly.

When he looks back, Sam is rolling his eyes. “You two are the worst,” he complains. “I thought it would get better once Bucky stopped pining over you - but I actually think it’s gotten worse.”

Steve rubs a hand over his beard to hide his smile. “You love it,” he says back.

Sam makes a gagging noise. “When we’re out in the field, all I hear is about _Steve this_ and _Steve that_. I told him he better put a ring on it fast, considering you’re now officially a silver fox and all.”

Heat instantly floods Steve’s cheeks and he glares. “Sam.”

“I’m not the one who started calling you that!” Sam holds up both hands and smiles, nodding toward the cover of TIME magazine. Then, he claps Steve on the shoulder. “I am happy for you man. Both of you. Love looks good on you guys.”

As if Bucky knew they were talking about him, he turns from his conversation and makes his way over to where they’re sitting, steps a little loose from the wine and champagne.

“Hey,” he says and drops directly into Steve’s lap, ignoring the plenty of perfectly empty chairs around. He drops an arm over Steve’s shoulders and presses a quick kiss to his mouth. “Miss me?”

“Always,” Steve says, wrapping his arm around his waist. “Sam was telling me I should say thank you. That this is all you.”

Bucky shrugs. “I had lots of help.” He wiggles a bit, getting comfortable in Steve’s lap. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” Steve tells him. “Thank you.”

Bucky smiles down at him. “Good. You deserve it. You work too much.”

Steve lays his head on Bucky’s shoulder, turning it so he can look directly at Sam. “My boss is kind of a hard ass,” he says, keeping a perfectly straight face.

“Whoa! Hey,” Sam laughs and stands up. “That’s my cue to leave. But I expect you both in your offices by 8 am, right?” He winks and then saunters off in the direction of Maria.

Steve grins after him and then kisses Bucky again. “How about a vacation?” he offers.

“A vacation?” Bucky asks. “Pal, I’m not sure either one of us knows what that really is.”

“I’m thinking of space actually,” Steve says and then waggles his left hand where the ring still shines. “Bruce and I did some testing a couple days ago. They’re ready.”

Bucky’s eyes light up with delight. “Really?”

“Really.”

The stones have been the lingering cloud over their lives, a dark threat on otherwise smooth seas. Steve still wakes from dreams several times a weeks, feeling the rainbows itch beneath his skin. It’s only gotten worse as the stones have strengthened. It’s time.

“I thought you could come with me,” Steve says. “Some stones belong here on earth, but others…”

“Yes,” Bucky says. “Yes.” Then, he pauses, turning so he can put his arms on either side of Steve’s neck. “When we get back, maybe, we can talk about a ceremony.”

Steve can’t stop his soppy expression. “Yeah?”

“If you’re ready,” Bucky says. “I don’t want to push. I know Peggy…”

_Peggy._

Steve leans forward and kisses Bucky. Like always, that name brings a little pulse of grief but it’s overshadowed by the joy in his own heart, the joy he knows that she would feel if she could see them now. He thinks of the Bucky and Steve in the other timeline, in all the other timelines, imagines them all smiling back at them.

“I’m ready,” he says.

Two weeks after his birthday, Steve returns to the Sanctum Sanctorum on a bright summer day and holds out the bright green gem to the Sorcerer Supreme. 

“I told you I would bring it when it was ready,” he says.

Strange plucks the stone from his fingers and holds it up to the light once. It hangs there for a moment, the green reflection sparking in Strange’s blues eyes, before the stone vanishes with a wave of his fingers. “I’m glad,” he says, tucking his hands away, “that you survived.”

Steve smiles and tucks his hands back into the wide pockets of his cardigan. His shoulders fill out the soft folds better than they did a few years back, but he’s still most comfortable in the baggy knit. “Thanks. Me too.”

“They are ready before you originally thought,” Strange notes. “Bad calculations?”

“Bruce thinks that when he infused me with the original serum, it helped accelerate the stabilization of their resonance.” Steve squints. “Or something like that.” He shrugs. “Either way, they are fully formed and ready to go.”

Strange nods and Steve can tell he wants to ask where the others are going - but Steve leaves before he can get the words out. 

He and Bucky go to Wakanda together, just a week later, and Shuri fairly vibrates with excitement when Steve presents her with the Mind Stone. 

“You know it best,” Steve tells her. “All that work you did with Vision before… well, before.”

“I will keep it safe,” she says, already mostly forgetting that both of them are standing there. Her quick fingers work over the clear casing holding the stone and Steve and Bucky slip from the lab. 

Before they leave, they walk down to the river where Bucky lived for two years. The spreading fruit tree is still there and Bucky leans against the bark while Steve sits in the grass. He can hear goats and children, somewhere off near the water. 

“Are you okay with this?” Steve asks as the sun begins to fall behind the green hills. “You could stay here. Live here. I’d come back when it's done.”

Bucky inhales deeply and then lets it out, slow. “Nah,” he says at last. “My home’s with you now.” He slides down to sit beside Steve, folding his legs and turning fully toward him. After a moment, he reaches up and brushes Steve’s lower lip with his metal thumb. The soft gold sunlight is reflected in his gray blue eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “You know that, right?”

Steve looks down at his aged hands, maybe not quite as wrinkled but still not the hands of a young man. “Bucky…”

Bucky leans close and kisses him under the Wakandan sunset.

They leave the planet a month later. It takes that long to pack up their little house, draping all the furniture in white sheets to keep it clean until they return.

“I expect you back for Christmas,” Sam says as they stand by the launch pad. The spaceship behind them is a gift from Thor - after he'd made sure they both could fly it without crashing. “And a really crazy birthday gift.” The shield is on Sam’s back and the bit of gray at his temples does nothing to diminish the strength in his shoulders. “And, you come back, whenever I call. The UD may be falling apart with Deville’s crazy ass locked up in prison but there’s still clean up to do.”

“Whenever,” Bucky promises. “Any time. Day or night.”

“And we’ll be back,” Steve adds. “Before you know it. As soon as all of these get put back where they’re supposed to be.” He holds up his hand with the ring, even though Sam won’t be able to see the four remaining stones contained within. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” Sam says and wraps them both up in a hug.

They had intended to leave Buster with Morgan and Pepper but, as they secure the last of their luggage, Steve hears a plaintive meow.

Buster is sitting at the foot of the ramp, staring up at them with those bright green eyes. There is something so miserable in his expression that Steve feels his heart crack wide open.

“We could bring him,” he tells Bucky, his eyes not leaving the cat. “He’s not really a cat. He’d probably be useful. You know, if we ran into space pirates.”

Bucky sighs - but Steve can feel him softening. “Where would we put his litter box, huh?”

Steve smiles and walks down the ramp to crouch in front of his little friend. “You want to come with us?” he asks, sliding his hands around Buster’s soft body and lifting him his chest. “It’s gonna be pretty boring, pal. It might be more exciting here.”

Buster huffs and snuggles against his chest, closing his eyes and purring loudly.

Steve turns and looks up at Bucky, sees the soft expression all over his face and knows it’s decided.

Carol takes the Space Stone. It’s in her blood after all. They meet her on a small moon outpost where she’s tracking Kree smugglers.

“I’ll keep it safe,” she promises, hand glowing faintly as she holds the blue stone in her hand.

She walks them back to their spaceship and stops dead when she sees Buster. “I didn’t know you guys had a flerken,” she says, instantly crouching. “Hey, buddy. How’d you hook up with these two losers?”

Steve and Bucky exchange glances.

“A flerken?” Bucky asks, sounding mystified.

“Is that why he has tentacles?” Steve asks. “He just showed up one day. We thought he was a stray.”

Carol laughs and scratches Buster’s ears as he sniffs at the pouch she tucked the Space Stone in. “He was probably attracted to the Infinity Stones and then decided you made a good home.”

Steve smiles. “He helped out when we had that attack on the compound a couple years back.”

She nods. “They’re great in a tight spot and very loyal. I bet he loves being in space with you guys. Goose, the flerken who adopted me and then Fury, always loves whenever he gets to go into space.” She stands up, wiping her hands on her flight suit. “I gotta take off - but you guys should take him off the spaceship more. He’ll do better around these parts than you two.”

The Reality Stone goes to Valkyrie, to be stored in the newly rebuilt Asgardian vaults.

The Power Stone returns to its temple on Morag and then, all that’s left, is the Soul Stone.

They go to Vormir together, walk across the sand dunes together, and up the mountain together. Buster trails them, fur all fluffed and on edge despite the deserted landscape. The Red Skull is gone and all that’s left is a dark stone bluff, thick gray clouds stretching in every direction and covering the surface of the planet. 

“This is where I decided, you know,” Steve says, crouched against one of the pillars. He hasn't seen this view in almost eighty years and it makes something sour curdle in his gut. “I know I told you beforehand what I was doing and my mind was made up… but it wasn’t until I was standing here that I knew I had to go back to her. I was so broken, Buck. I couldn’t see any way forward and I was gonna go back and just be… nothing. You wouldn’t have liked the person I was then.”

Bucky kicks a rock, goes right up to the edge and stares over at the spot where Nat died. “Nat would’ve wanted you to get a life,” he says. “She’d be glad to see you now.”

Steve huffs and the old ache of missing her throbs. He rubs a hand over his beard. “I got so much life,” he says at last. “She’d be so proud.”

Buster is prowling along the crumbled stones but he looks up when Steve takes off the ring, rolling it around between his fingers. He drifts closer, padding over and going up on his back paws to sniff at Steve’s hands, at the silvery scars that lace his skin.

“So what are you going to do with it?” Bucky steps back from the edge and nods to the ring, the last stone.

Steve looks out at the clouds, the purple water, and slides the ring back onto his hand. “This is where it belongs,” he says at last. “I can feel it.”

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. “You know it’s weird how you talk to rocks, right?”

Steve laughs. “It’s not talking… it’s just a feeling. This is where it’s supposed to be. But, I think,” he looks down at the ring and presses his thumb to it. The orange stone lifts from the gold in a slow spiral, growing larger until it fits neatly between Steve’s thumb and forefinger. “I think it’s going to be different now. Better.”

“Better how?”

“No more sacrifices. It’ll know when the intentions of those seeking it are good.”

“Pretty smart rock,” Bucky says. He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “You ready?”

“Yeah. I think I am.” Steve walks close to the edge and pulls back his arm. He throws the stone as hard as he can, watches the orange speck of it flare against the gray sky and then fall toward the water below. They can’t hear the splash.

Steve takes the ring off his finger, now just a ring at long last, and slides it into the side pouch of his dark flight suit. He presses his fingers against it. _Thank you, Peggy_.

Then, he reaches out and nudges Bucky’s shoulder. “Let’s go,” he says as he lifts Buster from where he's twining around his ankles. The cat clambers up Steve’s shoulders, draping himself around Steve’s neck like a shawl. 

As they make their way down the cliffs, all Steve can hear is the wind and the gentle rippling of water. It niggles at him, pulls at the thread of a memory… Natasha and Tony under an orange sky as they smiled at him with open arms.

It takes them almost three months to get back to New York: they take the long, slow route, treating this as the long-awaited honeymoon, even if it’s before the actual ceremony. 

“Space road trip!” Bucky declares as he slumps sideways in the co-pilot seat. “Who would’ve thought, huh?”

They make it back to the compound a couple weeks after Thanksgiving, when all the Christmas lights are starting to go up across the neighborhoods and buildings. 

It’s late when they put the ship down in the familiar launch bay, only the air traffic controller on duty who waves them on in with a lazy salute. “Cap says he’ll meet up with you in the morning,” he tells them as he helps them carry their bags off the ship. “Good to have you back, sirs.”

“Glad to be back,” Bucky says.

The night air is crisp and cold as they walk back to their little house by the river. Buster streaks around them in the dark as he refamiliarizes himself with the compound. 

Steve unlocks the door and flips on the lights. White sheets drape the furniture and the air is faintly musty. It still smells like home. 

He makes tea while Bucky uncovers the couches and chairs, throwing open the windows to let the chilly winter air chase out the staleness. When Steve comes out with their tea tray, Bucky’s got a fire going and Buster is stretched out on the rug right in front of it. The lights are off so the only glow comes from the fireplace. 

“I didn’t know you could be jet lagged from space travel,” Bucky says, propping his head up with his hand on the arm of the sofa. He yawns hugely. “I’m exhausted but I don’t want to sleep.”

Steve hums a little and sets out the tea, passing Bucky’s mug to him. “Chamomile. It’ll help.”

“C’mere,” Bucky murmurs, holding the mug in one hand and opening his arm to Steve. “I think you’ll help.”

Fondness wells up in Steve and he smiles at the impossible, glorious man in front of him. Holding his mug in both hands, he settles onto the couch and snuggles against Bucky’s side. Bucky is warm and soft and his arm is heavy across Steve’s shoulders, holding him close like something precious.

Buster hops up onto the couch and cuddles against Steve’s other side, purring a little louder than the crackle of the fire. 

The furnace kicks on in the walls as they drink their tea in a peaceful silence. When the mugs are empty, Steve puts both of them on the tray and settles back into Bucky’s arms. The bed just seems so far away and he feels so cozy right here. He can feel his thoughts start to slow, stretching out into shallow dreams as he stares out at the moonlight reflecting on the river. 

“I love you,” Bucky whispers to Steve’s hair, long after Steve had thought he’d fallen asleep. He presses a kiss to the silver strands. His voice is rough and slightly slurred with exhaustion. Steve can feel him shifting, sitting up straighter, pulling Steve close so he can lift him up, cradle him against his front.

Steve tips his chin back and kisses him on the mouth as Bucky stands up, tastes the chamomile tea. The fire is burning low now and all he can make out is the soft blue-gray of Bucky’s eyes. He tucks himself against Bucky’s chest and shuts his own eyes, smiling when Bucky rests his cheek on the crown of his head. 

“I love you too,” he murmurs as Bucky carries him from their living room into their bedroom.

He hears the soft patter of Buster’s paws and then he's being settled onto cool sheets, Bucky sliding in behind him.

Steve falls asleep in Bucky’s arms, in their one bed, in their small house by the river, and Buster snoring at their feet.

They may have taken the slow way but, at long last, they're home.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for coming along on this ride. You've all been such lovely readers and I thank you so much for that as I was super nervous before posting this story. 
> 
> I have to thank everyone again who helped make this fic what it is: Alby_Mangroves, ObsessiveReader, Lucifuge5. Their comments and suggestions and critiques made this fic so much stronger than what it was. Alby's art truly elevated the writing and I can't thank her enough for her patience and her collaboration!
> 
> Also, we got to add some lovely art from Psifiend, who was also an artist on this work! The art itself is in Chapter 6 and I've also linked it here: [Steve's hands, alight with the Infinity Stones](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49036732831_92ddaacb99_o.jpg)
> 
> On a final note, I'm truly going to miss writing the Steve and Bucky in this story - so if anyone has any additional scenes (either during the story or after the story) feel free to mention them! :D


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